CH 96

“Filling out the workforce and adding new product.”

Translated by Dawn

“Filling out the workforce and adding new products.”

“Hey, what’s going on?”

“Hurry up and sell it!”

“Not yet!”

After returning from the dungeon, I visited the store after delivering materials to the Adventurers’ Guild. Then I saw a strange sight before my eyes.

“This is the store……where I was in the morning, right?”

The scene was so different from the morning that I felt compelled to ask someone. Many people were crowding the store entrance, all asking for something, saying “Please hurry up and sell it” or “Please give it to me”.

Since Greg Trading Company currently sold only one type of product, it was not difficult to imagine what the purpose of the crowd was. It was not hard to imagine, but my honest impression was that I did not want to believe it if possible.

“I’m so sorry everyone! All items are sold out today. They will be restocked tomorrow, so please come back tomorrow!”

As I gazed at the chaotic scene in a daze, I heard a familiar voice, Greg, the representative of Greg Trading Company. Apparently, the more than 200 bracelets I had handed over to the store today had all been sold out in just one day, and he loudly apologized and made an announcement to the crowds of people.

The crowd was so loud that it was almost as if he was apologizing and announcing to the crowd. …This is like a department store bargain sale.

When I entered the store as soon as the crowd had receded, I found the three of them hanging down with limp expressions on their faces.

“Hey, hey. Tch, why are you guys slacking off?”

“B-boy…”

“By the looks of it, it must have been quite a success.”

“The first time we started out, we didn’t have that many customers, but after lunch, the number of people started to increase rapidly. By early evening, we ran out of today’s stock.”

I didn’t expect to run out of stock the first day we opened. I was thinking that the estimate was that it would be quiet for a couple of days and then slowly start to get more and more people…….

“There were…waves of people”

“I-I’m tired!”

Natalie’s siblings were also leaning back in the chairs set up in the store, muttering to themselves as they squeezed out. ……You guys, as I said before, the pay won’t go up, so just hang in there, okay? 

This looked like we were understaffed with our current hiring structure…….Hmmm, looks like we need to hire some new people. Okay…….

“Greg, close the store right now. We’re closed for the day.”

“Yes?”

“Even if we keep the store open, we won’t be able to do business as long as we don’t have any products. You’ll just have to deal with all the people coming in again, won’t you?”

“I-I understand!”

Apparently, he had endured quite a bit, and he responded immediately to my instructions and started to move. I closed the door of the store and put a sign on the door saying that the store was closed for the day.

“Now, should I begin?”

Huh? Begin what?”

“Of course. Filling out the workforce.”

“Well……that would be great for us.”

“Gerolie and Jean can go home today. Thanks for your hard work. Here are your wages for today. Go and have a meal with it.”

I handed each of them four large copper coins, today’s wages, as they worked hard. Jean accepted them with honest joy, while Natalie said, “It’s Natalie! Moouu!!”, and Jean smiled at her as she accepted the coins with a grimace.

I asked the siblings to stay here, and with Greg behind me, we set out for a certain place.

***

“B-boy, this is…”

The place I came to with Greg was the Slave Trading Company. To put it simply, the Slave Trading Company was a store where slaves could be bought, but slaves were basically classified as property. Therefore, human rights were not widely recognized, and slaves were often treated badly.

However, slaves had the nature of being unable to disobey their masters through slave contracts, and I believed that there was no better candidate to make them abide by the secrecy. The guild of commerce could also recruit people if we wanted to, but since they were not slaves, there was no guarantee that they would keep our secret.

The Greg Trading Company was still a newcomer to the guild, and its secrets could not be made known, so the number of people it could hire was limited.

“Good afternoon, how can I help you today?”

“I am looking for a slave who can serve customers and do arithmetic. Preferably a young female slave.”

“…Please wait a moment.”

The moment Greg and I arrived at the store, the slaver saw us and started to approach Greg as an adult, but as soon as he saw that I had the initiative, he immediately turned his hand back to me. I guess that’s what you’d expect from a slaver.

After waiting in the reception room for a while, the slaver entered the room with a few young women dressed in headdresses. The women ranged in age from early teens to just over 30, and although they were a little thin, their appearance and bodies were not bad……and quite frankly, they were very erotic. I wonder if it was the owner’s taste, but I felt that only women with large breasts were picked up in general. I didn’t intend to turn them into sex slaves……but it was up to Greg to decide since I wasn’t the one who signed the contract with the slaves.

“I am sorry to keep you waiting. Here are some of our young female slaves who have experience in customer service and can also do arithmetic.”

The fat, slightly smelly slave trader tried to butter me up with a sly smile. Does he think he is serving his customers?

Well, anyway, as I went through the women through the Analysis, I found out that most of them had committed some kind of crime. Well, it would not surprise me if they had committed a crime or two, since people who become slaves were not normal people. However, in this case, since I was hiring her as an employee of the store, I would prefer someone with no criminal record…….

(These two are…)

In the midst of all this, two of the candidate slaves had never committed a crime. To be precise, they were labeled as falsely accused, but I was curious and decided to hear from these two people.

“Manager.”

“Yes.”

“I want to talk with these two. You can send the rest of them away.”

“…Understood. Hey.”

At my word, He immediately instruct his subordinates to take everyone out of the room except for the woman I pointed out to him. Now, let’s hear how this happened.

“Manager, I’d like to ask how these two came to be slaves?”

“These two…their names are Molly and Letica. They were on a peddling trip with a load of goods for a certain business deal. Then bandits came and took their cargo, and when they were about to be attacked themselves, they managed to escape with their lives…….”

So once the slaver looked at them as he broke off the conversation, he began to speak again.

“Because they were victims of banditry, the two of them decided to compensate for the damage. But the amount of money was too much for them to pay.”

“So they were both sold into slavery?”

“Yes.”

The slaver nodded in agreement to my question. I see, so they were falsely accused.

Originally, the relationship between bandits and merchants was based on a rob-or-be-robbed relationship, and merchants always transported their goods with the understanding that they would be attacked by bandits. Therefore, it was an unspoken rule that even if a merchant was attacked by bandits and lost their goods, they would not claim damages against the people who were transporting their goods, claiming that they had no choice and that they had encountered a natural disaster.

The representative of the trading company that employed these two, however, seemed to have ignored this rule and charged them for the damage. This was exactly the kind of unscrupulous merchant.

““….””

As I watch the two of them huddle together as if frightened by my gaze, I pondered what I should do. Or rather, I’d already decided on the answer.

“Alright, I’ll take these two. How much?”

“Yes, five small gold pieces for the adult and two small gold pieces for the young lady.”

…Cheap. If this was the case, the building I bought from the commercial guild was more expensive. I wonder how people were worth less than buildings……. Well, it doesn’t hurt that it’s cheap, so I’d say it’s a big help to me, but……

“All right.”

“Thank you. Let’s get the contract signed right away.”

“Wait a minute. It’s Greg over here who’s going to sign the contract. So, Greg, sign the contract of these two.”

“Huh!?”

Apparently, he thought I was going to sign the contract, and he made a funny face like a pigeon got a peashooter at my words. I wish I could capture that face with my phone.

Then it took me a few minutes to convince Greg, and finally, he said, “You’re an employee of your trading company, you’re the one who’s supposed to sign the contract. Just shut up and listen to me!” I convinced him with a good argument and the full force of power harassment. In this world, there was no concept of power harassment and no inflammatory social networking sites, so my words and actions would never be discussed. Long live another world.

“The contract is now complete. The ownership of these two will now belong to Greg-sama.”

“T-thanks…”

Greg seemed to be in no way affected by the fact that I forced and persuaded him to do so. ……Do you provide educational guidance? Mainly in physical language.

Anyway, now that we’d got some employees to help out, we could deal with tomorrow’s sale. I’m definitely not going to help, though……hahaha.

“Thank you very much, Master, for buying us. My name is Molly.”

“Thank you very much, my name is Letica.”

“Rolando. Why are you thanking me anyway? Your master is Greg, remember?”

“….”

GREG smiled at my words as if he was uncomfortable. Well, I just brought him here and made him sign a contract. I paid for the slaves, though.

However, the girls seemed to understand the core of who helped them get into this contract, and they would not stop thanking me.

“If Rolando-sama had not paid for our purchase, the contract itself would never have been concluded. We are grateful to Greg-sama for accepting the contract as our contractor, but we are also rightly grateful to you for providing the funds to make this contract possible.”

“I understand your point. I accept your gratitude. But don’t forget that I only provided the money and Greg is the master.”

Then we left the slaver’s store and stopped at a clothing store on the way back to our store to buy a couple of outfits for the two of them. Come to think of it, Natalie and her brother’s clothes don’t look very decent either, so maybe I should buy some clothes for them as well.

Once we returned to our store, I brought them together with Natalie and the others and had them introduce themselves to each other. Then, since they were nominally employees, even though they were slaves, I asked them about the payment of their wages.

“….I can get a salary?”

“Yes, but some of it will be set off against the price I paid for you, and I will release you from slavery when the payment is finally paid.  Since it would be awkward for me to pay you the same amount as Natalie and the others, how about three large coins a day, of which two will be used to pay off the debt, and the remainder will be your wages?”

“I would be very grateful if you would just give me the money. Please.”

They both said that was fine with them, so that was the decision we made regarding the wages. After showing them to the villa, I took the five of them to dinner at Summer Sunlight Through The Trees, which was right across the street from the trading company, and we disbanded for the day.

After parting with Greg and the others, I returned to my room and gave an order to the golem that was waiting in my room.

“Everybody line up!”

“Mrrr”

They lined up in a single, lean movement, waiting for my orders to come. For some reason, Proto was standing next to No. 1, but I started giving it instructions without paying attention to it.

“No. 1 to No. 4, I want you to take out the magic quartz and dark magic ore from this magic bag and process them, respectively. No. 5 to No. 10, please continue with the same work as before. Finally, No. 11 and No. 12, please put the finished bracelets into this magic bag.”

I gave a magic bag to each of No. 1 to No. 4, who was in charge of processing magic quartz and dark magic ore, and No. 11 and No. 12, who were in charge of finishing bracelets. These magic bags were originally one with a capacity of 500 kilograms and the other with a 300-kilogram capacity that had a Space-time attribute that slowed the deterioration of objects, but since they were connected to the storage I was using, they were essentially the same magic bag. By the way, I had only recently been able to do this ability.

While the golems were working on the bracelets, I started to create new products to be sold at the Greg Trading Company. As a matter of fact, I had already decided what I was going to produce.

It had been six years since I had lived in this world……or rather regained the memory of my previous life, and after looking around and at people for those six years, I was beginning to notice that a certain thing was missing. What is it? ……Yes, it is a convenience item.

In my previous life on earth, there was an abundance of useful things that enriched our lives. This time I would make one of them.

The first step was to take out the iron ore and smelt it into iron ingots. Normally, blacksmithing skills were required, but with the Separate Dismantling skill, iron ingots with only impurities removed could be easily produced.

The iron ingot was then heated with flame magic to bring it to a high temperature to a soft state where it could be processed. At this time, to prevent the fire from spreading to the surrounding area, I used wind and ice magic to guard the ingot.

The size of the ingot was about three centimeters, and it was only as thin as a wire. It was folded into two pieces, one straight and the other in a wavy or terraced shape to prevent slipping. The final step was to cool the wire in water to keep it in that shape.

[Hairpin]: A tool made of iron to hold up hair.　Market price: 2 small copper coins for three pieces.

“Now, the hairpin is complete.”

That’s right. The useful item I made this time was this hairpin. The shape was similar to a common bobby pin, and it was characterized by the tiers that prevented the hair from slipping when it was held in place.

In all the years I had lived in this world, the most common hairpin used by women was a simple, plain string or ribbon. Other than that, the only other things that women used were cloth wrapped around their heads to hold their hair in place, or white brims worn by maidens in the service of nobles. In other words, there was a strong possibility that the hairpin, a tool used only to hold the hair in place, did not exist in this world. At least, I had never met a woman wearing a hairpin here in Orargrand.

In a world where there were so few options for fixing hair, what would happen if I could create a hairpin, a tool to fix hair?　……It’s going to be even busier from now on.

Then I produced some hairpins and prepared some magic stones to replenish the golems’ magic power. After covering the golems with wind magic to prevent any sound from leaking out, I got ready for bed and crawled into bed.