135-Chapter 8-11 Desperate despair (with burglars)

Well, I think I'm going to torture you now and punish you, but of course Grandpa and Blanca are going to be there, right?

"Of course,

I'm in.

The two of them seemed to be pissed off by the burglars' attitude after all, and they nodded quickly to my invitation. Amour didn't seem particularly interested, but he didn't seem to want to stay behind, and after showing some pretense of thinking about it, he said he was going to participate.

It would be a nuisance to Amy and the others to do it right here, so I decided to go up to the guild and rent a training camp, although it would be a hassle. Besides, the guild would have other adventurers and staff to stop us if we were about to overdo it.... Whether they can actually stop it or not........

'Well then, Amur, go ahead and secure the place. We'll take these guys out in the wagon.　

Okay.

After replying that, Amour rushed to the guild. It's because we do illegal things, so we need to get permission from the head of the guild beforehand. Well, in this world, criminals don't have any human rights, so it is unlikely that they will be refused, but even so, there is a huge difference between having the permission of the guild leader and not having it when the time comes. The most important thing is that if you are refused, the place will just become a secret dungeon base, so it's not a big deal.

''It's fine to transport them in a carriage, but it's kind of annoying that these guys seem to be enjoying themselves.

That's where I have a better idea.

What are you doing?

When I told them what I was thinking, they looked puzzled for a moment, and then gave me a very wicked look. I'm sure that they have the same kind of grimace on their faces as I do on mine.

Then we quickly got ready and headed for the guild.

'Hey, look at that!'

What's that?

Pfft!

You're an idiot!

People who have been passing us for a while now are pointing at us and laughing like fools. To be precise, the finger is pointing at the carriage behind us (without the hood), and it is the burglars who are being laughed at.

The burglars are tied up with ropes and gagged and mounted on the carriage with a wooden board hanging from their necks. On that board is written a word from the person himself (fabricated) in addition to why this is happening and how he was caught. It was me and Aimee who thought about it. Surprisingly, Aimee was more relentless than I was in writing the word. I'm sure she was filled with resentment towards the burglars.

Just like that, the burglars were rocking in a carriage pulled by Shiroumaru, and the burglars were laughing their way to the guild in a slow, roundabout way. Even if they were to be released, they would no longer be able to operate in Seigen.

''Guild leader, I'll borrow your training camp.

I don't mind. But I'm going to supervise you just the same. I'm sure the guild's reputation will be damaged if you are tortured to death in the training camp, and they will be monitored by the royal capital.

Even if you heard about it from Amur beforehand, you feel like you've been cheated out of your job when you're approved so easily. Well, just think of it as having an accomplice in case something goes wrong.

I decided to think so and left the burglars in the middle of the training camp. Normally, the training camp is where the novices are trained, but today, none of them were there. After all, he had reserved it for himself with the authority of the guild leader.

''We're going to do something illegal, even if it's obvious to those around us, it's better to be out of the public eye.

He said.

While I was tying the burglars to the chair, Grandpa and the others began to prepare things like large pliers and saws for each of them... I don't know when they prepared such things, but just showing them to me seemed to have an effect, and until then, they had been acting in an impudent manner The burglars who had taken the gag off turned blue in unison.

One of the burglars looked like he wanted to say something, so I gagged him and he started shouting in a trembling voice.

''Oh, we're acquainted with the executives of the 'Shadow Crimson'! Don't think you can do this and get away with it for free!

As the man shouted, the other burglars were beginning to calm down a bit, but in contrast, the guild leader's face grew grim.

I thought I had heard the name 'Shadow Crimson' somewhere, but it was the name of an out-of-the-way party I had heard from the djinn in the royal capital.

''The fact that you mention that name in front of me doesn't mean that you guys think you'll get away with it for free, does it?''　

When the head of the guild told the man, he felt an illusion that the temperature around him had dropped. As expected of a guild leader in a dungeon city, his power is first class.

''Oi! You heard me! Gather the guys from that time immediately!

""Yes!"

The head of the guild gave a loud direction towards the entrance, and a reply came back from the other side of the door, revealing several people slamming into the doorway.

'I'm sorry, but I had a staff member on standby just in case. I don't expect to be able to stop you guys, but I'll have to at least put up some resistance in case it happens.

The guild leader also seemed to have prepared as many excuses as possible in case something happened. Well, he wanted to show that he had stopped the burglar to some extent when we were about to kill him by mistake, and he wanted to create a situation where he had nothing to do with it. Well, we knew that there were some officials waiting outside the door, so we knew it would be something like that.

Then, as I waited for a while, listening to the rants of the burglars, I heard the sound of footsteps coming from a large number of people running, and the door was violently opened.

'Guild leader, it's true that the remnants of the Crimson have been captured!

The man in the lead spoke loudly to the guild leader. It was a man I had seen in the guild several times. Behind him, followed by those who had the same grim face as the man in the lead. It seems that they were members of the group that fought against the Shadow Crimson that Jin was talking about before. The man at the front seems to be a leader among them.

After exchanging a few words with the guild leader, the men were about to approach the burglars with an angry look on their faces...

I wish they'd stop raiding my prey.

Before they could get there, me and Blanca interrupted and blocked the way. Grandpa casually walked behind the men and held out his staff to check them out.

''Mm ... sorry about that.''

The man in the lead, surprisingly, quickly admitted his fault and apologized. The men behind him didn't seem to be convinced, but they soon realized that they were being pinned back and forth and decided to be quiet.

I have some idea of what you guys are up to, but that's not the same thing. I don't think it's adventurous to come in and intercept someone's prey out of the blue.

My provocative words, except for the man in front of me, were irritating to the extent that he almost got a blue streak on his face, but he seemed to be calm enough to know that my words were correct. Well, maybe they just can't move because they're getting behind me.

'But under the right conditions, I'll give these guys away ... well, not exactly. I'm willing to split the rights to these guys.

Huh?

A dumb voice leaked out from the man in the lead at my turn of phrase. Well, with the wind direction changing so suddenly, I might be forgiven for reacting like that, but for me, the situation is right on schedule.

'You guys want to get information out of these guys, don't you? I want to make sure these guys don't feel like messing with anyone I know.

What's your point?

The man seemed to be suspicious of my words. But I shrug it off and go on with my story.

I mean, you might be able to help. It's not like I'm trying to get money from you, so it should be good for you.

The fact that I'm trying to scare them makes them realize that I'm not lying to them. As far as I'm concerned, I don't need any information about the Shadow Crimson, or worse, I can take these guys somewhere else and then deal with them. In that case, they might turn the Adventurer's Guild of Seigen against you (and the guards), but killing criminals who tried to harm you is not a felony, so you can just leave the city when the need arises. By the way, since Amy and others and spectators have heard these burglars saying things like retaliation, it is highly likely to be judged as self-defense, and most importantly, since the guards didn't catch them and said they would be taken later, it's a verbal promise made on the spot, so there's no particular problem even if they don't fulfill it.

Thank goodness for us but the story is so good you'd think there's something more to it than that, wouldn't you?

As I suspected, they don't believe me so easily. But even if they don't believe me, the men have no choice but to go along with me. They talked for a while, and eventually they decided to work with us.

Well, don't be so hard on yourself. We're going to educate them not to do bad things in the future, and at the same time, we're going to get the information out of them. Nah, it's easy, right?

The men listened to my words, and for some reason they froze for about ten seconds with a dumb face, but gradually they seemed to understand the situation and started to prepare for my style of education as I instructed them. It's not much time to prepare, since all I had to do was prepare a tub of water and bring a pungent-smelling liquid along with a cloth to act as a restorative.

'Well, let's get started,'

When I was ready, I decided to begin educating the burglars. The first burglars were given the condition that they would be released if they sincerely regretted their actions or provided information about the Shadow Crimson. Well, it was hard to talk to the burglars since they took turns changing their education partners for roughly one minute per burglar, and the burglars were blindfolded and gagged except during their education. And since there was no point in letting them get hurt, I had to hurt them so that they couldn't speak when they were about to speak, and I had to gag them even before the time was up, so it took about fifteen rounds before the first one was freed.

Once one was freed, it was quicker for the rest to be freed. After eliciting information from all of them, it turned out that the burglars only spoke of the Shadow Crimson. The burglars didn't seem to know much about Shadow Crimson, and were just saying its name because they thought I'd be scared if I mentioned it.

All of the freed burglars had a look of relief on their faces, but they were so distraught that they squealed at the sound of something small in their blind spots. When educating the burglars, they were blindfolded and gagged, but their ears were not plugged, so they seem to be overly sensitive to sound...honestly, I may have overdone it.

But despite my remorse, the men who participated in the education were pissed off that they were forced to waste their time with the Shadow Crimson, and before returning from the guild, the leader of the men approached the burglars and whispered something into their ears. The burglars heard these words and became even more pale and distraught, but the man ignored the burglars and came over to me and apologized again for his initial misconduct.

When I received the apology, the men bowed their heads again before leaving the training camp.

'Temma, what were they muttering about?'

That certainly bothers me.

'Nuh-uh!'

Grandpa saw the frightened way the burglars seemed to be going crazy, and he seemed to understand that it was the men, but he didn't understand what they were saying. Blanca and Amour, who are beastmen with good ears, didn't seem to hear it either, and they seemed curious.

''Yeah, the burglars were told that from now on we have to watch out not only for us, but also for the real 'Shadow Crimson'.......''

Even though they had been decimated, there was a possibility that a new Shadow Crimson could have been formed without people knowing about it, since they had let the executives escape. In that case, if they were caught failing on top of having their name spoken for a dickish crime, they could be retaliated against for having their name disgraced. Moreover, they are the kind of people who will go down in the country's criminal history. I don't think this is a half-hearted retaliation. In fact, they could have done something that would have made them happy to die.

When the burglars heard about it, they started to be scared like that. The burglars' hearts, already broken and weakened by our education, were unable to withstand the new, invisible fear.

After that, the burglars were taken in by guards called in by the guild officials. The guards are the ones who had a problem with me, and they were constantly twisting their necks when they saw the change in the burglars, but when the guild leader explained to me that they only noticed the possibility of being targeted by the Shadow Crimson, I was skeptical, but I didn't try to listen to them in any more detail.

''I guess this is the end of the matter. Let's go home.

We did what we had to do for now, so we had to go back to the apartment to explain to Aimee and the others. The guild leaders looked as if they wanted to say something, but as if they had no reason to keep us back, they just walked away from us.

'It's late, let's get something to eat and go home, shall we?'　

'Well I don't know what kind of store I have here, so Temma can decide as she sees fit.

When Blanca said that, Grandpa and Amour nodded. But the trouble is, I don't know much about the shops around here either. At any rate, I'm always with Slarin and his friends, so rather than eating in a shop, I mostly bought something from a food cart or cooked my own food.

'I don't know much about it either, so let's go in at the right place,'

The three of them looked surprised at my words, but when I told them about Slurin and the others, they looked convinced. By the way, this story is a bit of a tamer, and Aguri and others have said the same thing before.

The restaurant I went into was not very good, and the salt-roasted meat I prepared for Slarin and his friends might have been better.

''Those people were taken away safely, weren't they?

The next day, when I reported to Amy about the burglars of yesterday, she looked relieved for some reason. I couldn't decide whether that "safe" meant that the burglars' lives were intact or that they were caught without any problems.

In addition, the damage caused by the burglars seems to have occurred in some of the lodgings around here, so it may be that they were the ones who did it. In the event that you're not a burglar, you're going to be able to get a good deal more than you'd like.

I left Amy and I went around the stalls and other places as usual looking for Mithril, but I couldn't find him at all, no matter how many times I went around.

'Temma, let's go to the dungeon,'

Amur, who was following me, invited me to go to the dungeon while eating a spit-roast, but I wasn't too keen on it since I had just returned. When I refused, Amur was sweltering, but he didn't seem to have any intention of going alone, so he started walking behind me in silence.

'Oh, isn't it Temma?'

Suddenly, I turned around when I was approached from behind and saw Master Ganz there. He seemed to have come to do some shopping, as one of his apprentices was carrying a package behind the master.

'I hear you've gathered a lot of mithril, how are you going to make a horse out of it?

The master asked me how to make tannikaze without even saying hello.

I think the recipe is a secret, don't you? Don't you usually keep that kind of thing secret?

The apprentice stopped me, and the master said something like, "That's true, too," but I just wanted to get his opinion, too, so I decided to ask him for advice. When I told him about this, he got excited, pulled my arm and started walking in the direction of his workshop. I was surprised by the suddenness of this, but the one who surprised me the most was my master's apprentice. At any rate, it was because he suddenly trundled away and left me alone. By the way, Amur followed me and his master without a problem.

I felt sorry for my apprentice, so I stopped Master on the way to pick him up. The master was complaining about his apprentice even though it was his own fault, but he seemed to feel a little bad about it and was following us even as he complained. In the end, I took care of the luggage in my magic bag, and we used a carriage to get to the workshop, but even in the carriage, the master was very excited. I'm not going to ask him how to make tannikaze in a carriage with other customers, but the customers who were around him seemed to recognize him as a strange guy and turned away from him.

'Well, let's hear the story, then,'

As soon as I entered the workshop, the master pulled me to his desk and said so. There were various documents and ores on the desk, but master roughly brushed them all away.

The first thing I'm going to tell you is how to make a broken tannikazee, but to put it simply, it's made by dividing it into parts and pouring magical iron into a mold like a cast, and then connecting them together with spherical joints. The advantage of this is that it's easy to make and it's very strong. The disadvantage is that it uses a lot of magical iron and is too heavy.

You said it was sturdy, but I heard it took a thunderbolt from a bicorn and didn't pop. If you're right, then it's going to melt before it breaks?

It's because I was inexperienced at the time I made it. In short, there were too many impurities mixed into the melted magic iron, and when the magic iron was poured into the mold, it was not able to completely remove the air. When I told him that, the master was satisfied.

''So, I thought I'd try a new method this time...''

'Before that, you see ... if the method Temma is trying to use is one I don't know about, I promise I won't tell anyone about it, and I won't try it without Temma's permission. If you want, I can write a pledge.

The master had one of his students bring out a piece of paper, on which was written his name, the contents of the pledge, and even the penalty for breaking the pledge. Naturally I refused, but my master was adamant about it, so I was forced to write it down. By the way, some of his clients come to him with requests that they can't talk to others about, so he is used to such situations. Incidentally, in the penalty section, it said, 'If you break your oath, you will be a slave.

The first step is to harden the bones with metal, so that the bicorn's bones form a core. And then we'll put some more armor made of mithril exterior around it...

'You don't want the slightest gap between the metal core and Mithril's armor, do you?

The master immediately understood the problem with my method. If there was a gap between the core and the armor, it would begin to distort and break every time it was moved too much.

I'm sure you're not going to be able to get away with it. Thinning the metal around the bones and making the armor a little thicker. When you put it together, it'll feel like the armor will support it instead of the bones.

My master's suggestion reminded me of a plastic model robot. It's also very scantily clad inside, but it can stand on its own, and can be posed freely.

It's a good idea to think of the bones as a core, but rather than thinking of them as a core, it might be easier to make them as circuits that channel magic power. Besides, it would save us a lot of mithril.

Then we know what to do. Now we just need to work out the details.　

After that, I had to discuss many things with my master. He was going to participate in the production of the project because he had come up with an idea. I was grateful for his help, so I asked him for help, but his apprentice looked complicated. I asked him later about it in detail, and he said it was because he realized that he had several urgent jobs on his plate, and because of the production of the golem, he was going to be working all night for the next few days. I thought my students would give me a hard time, but I heard that they were interested in the production itself, so I didn't have to worry about that.

We continued the discussion until dusk and then went back to the apartment after confirming the general work procedure. The work was scheduled to start in a week's time, and in the meantime, we were to gather the necessary materials. The master himself was planning to start tomorrow, but his pupils persuaded him to do so, and he succeeded in grabbing a week's time to do it. Incidentally, I also supported my pupils, saying that I needed time to gather materials, so they were quite grateful to me after I convinced them.

It had been a week since the day of the meeting. I'm visiting my master's workshop again.

I've been busy gathering the remaining materials for the week until today. As usual, I collected mithril, but I also flew to the royal capital to collect it, literally. As a result, I was able to add about 200 kilograms of mithril to my collection, but it was quite a challenge. I'm not sure if it's because the knights found me while I was looking for mithril in the capital, and through the knights, the king and others found out I was coming to the capital, and I was called to the royal castle. I've been thinking about how to get out of here, because I was trying to adjust my schedule until just before Maria's arrival, because the king and his men were ready to follow Seigen until Maria's arrival. Well, even if they escaped safely from the royal castle, those people would still come to Seigen and participate in making a golem on their own. Without thinking about the inconvenience to others at all.......

Now that the kings have found out about the new Tanikaze, it's going to be noisy if I don't go and show it to them eventually.

'Alright Temma. We're about to get started.

With my master's words, I decided to forget about the events in King's Landing for a while, and I took the mithril out of my magic bag and gave it to him. Now we can start the process of melting mithril. In advance, I asked the masters to make a model mold based on the parts of Tanikaze. They poured mithril into this mold and beat it little by little to forge it. The silver needed to forge the mithril is prepared in large quantities.

'On second thought, I'm lucky to have my master's help. It would have been impossible for me to forge Mithril without breaking the shape of the armor.

If it was a simple shape, he would be able to forge it enough to use it in practice, but it must have been impossible to forge it by pounding on something made from a mold like this one. At best, it would have been enough to make an armor with a slippery surface.

'Oh, thank me enough! I've never done anything this big before either, but I've made armor the same way many times, so keep it on the big ship!

The master picked up on my musings and said this with a confident look on his face. I laughed at him and began to prepare for the job I'd been assigned.

The job I had been assigned was to apply mithril to the core bone. The bones to be coated with mithril have circuits carved into them that are used for things like body strengthening, and you have to work carefully to fill in the gaps in these circuits with mithril. If you fail to do this, for example, three legs are strengthened and only one of them is normal, which can lead to problems such as a sudden breakage of the leg while running. To prevent this from happening, I drew up many drafts before digging, tried them out with the same size wooden stick before the real thing, and asked my grandpa for a final check. Thanks to that, I'm pretty much out of bed now.

'Okay, let's get started! Don't let up!

""Oh!"

I responded with my students to my master's call. Amur, who was watching this scene from the corner of the workshop, later said, "It was like Tenma had become an apprentice to her master.