Chichiue, I Have a Favor to Ask
“Chichiue, I have a favor to ask.”
“Hmm? Dermont has a favor?”
Now that I was five years old, there was something I wanted to try, so I made a request of Chichiue.
Thanks to the alchemy magic I’d continued practicing every single day, I’d definitely succeeded in increasing my mana.
If it was alchemizing a block of wood thirty centimeters in length, width, and height, I could do it thirty times in a row without getting dizzy.
I’d even gotten used to making toys for my younger brother and sister, who were three years younger than me. Though Tiffany would complain, “It’s not cute!”...
W-well, what I was about to try had nothing to do with good or bad sense.
The place Chichiue-dono brought me to at my request was the ore sorting facility for the mines within our territory.
The ore excavated from the mine would be crushed into fine pieces, and only the parts containing gold or silver would be extracted. Then those were mixed with molten lead and heated at high temperatures, well, after a bunch of complicated processes, they’d obtain gold.
It was an incredibly troublesome task, and if people weren’t careful, it could lead to major accidents. I mean, they heated things to temperatures of several hundred degrees.
There was also dust everywhere, so it was probably terrible for the body too.
But what would happen if all that could be turned into one-click alchemy with alchemy magic?
To begin with, alchemy was supposed to be the art of turning things that weren’t gold into gold. Well, that was just fantasy, though.
In this world, making potions from herbs or extracting gold from ore was called alchemy.
Since they both had “alchemy” in the name, surely magic could do it too.
“Well then, I’ll begin.”
“Begin what exactly? What’re ya planning to make yer son do, Boss?”
The people in the sorting facility were dwarves.
Dwarves. Earth spirit folk. Despite their stout physiques, they were dexterous craftsmen by nature, and many worked in mines. However, they were also notoriously stubborn, and most hated being employed by humans.
The dwarves working in the baron house mines all worked here because they genuinely liked Father’s character.
Considering the possibility of failure, we’d prepared small pieces of ore before sorting.
I flowed mana into my fingertips and touched the ore.
Back in the beginning, the magic circle would float in midair, but now I could deploy it directly on the ground from the start.
The center positioning was perfect too.
The words appearing in my head were [Crush], [Extract Specific Ore], [Polish], and [Cut].
Extract! That was probably it!
The moment I focused on [Extract Specific Ore], the next options became [Gold], [Silver], and [Quartz].
Quartz...? What was that again?
While wondering that, I selected all of them for now.
The magic circle and the ore began glowing. The light vanished in an instant, leaving behind ugly gold-colored grains, equally ugly silver-colored ore, something resembling crystal, and what looked like ordinary rocks.
“It worked... but this is a little different from what I imagined.”
I’d expected it to come out shaped like ingots. Yeah, this was just the extracted state.
There was no way this could be sold as a product.
“Wha… what the hell is this!?”
“That’s incredible, Dermont! To think alchemy magic could do this much!”
“No, Chichiue. In my imagination, it was supposed to go as far as making ingots. Like this, it still needs another step.”
“But Dermont, there isn’t enough material there to make ingots in the first place. Besides, ingots have proper standardized sizes and weights. They can’t be smaller or larger than that.”
R-right. Even in my previous life, gold bars had fixed weights.
“To think ya did in a single instant what takes us days ta do from raw ore... Boss, is this really magic?”
“It is, Master Craftsman. My son received a rather rare magic called alchemy magic.”
“I see...”
Hm? Was there a problem?
The dwarf foreman, the most important person here, was staring at the extracted gold with a grim expression.
W-was there an issue with the purity? Maybe it hadn’t extracted properly and impurities remained mixed in?
“Boss... it’d be better if the others didn’t learn about this.”
“Eh? Why’s that, Master Craftsman?”
“Why? Because if greedy bastards found out about a magic this incredible, it’d be a disaster. They’d snatch the boy up and work his magic to death in some mine from dawn till dusk. I can already see it happening.”
An incredible... magic. So the dwarf foreman acknowledged alchemy magic!?
But...
That was careless of me.
I’d only done this because I desperately wanted to make my parents happy, but if people realized I could instantly extract materials from ore... then this magic absolutely had tremendous value.
“Luckily, only me an’ you’re here right now. Keep this matter secret.”
“S-so that’s how it is... You’re right. We absolutely must avoid Dermont suffering something terrible.”
“B-but Chichiue, I...”
I’d spent all this time training to increase my mana because I wanted to help the baron house.
And after all that effort, I’d finally reached the point where I could use my magic a decent number of times.
I wanted to repay my kind family... I wanted to show them how grateful I was.
“Wahahaha. Relax, boya. Ain’t nobody saying we’re gonna let yer hard work go to waste.”
“Eh? T-then what should we do?”
“Simple enough. We’ll just say us dwarves got our own secret methods for extractin’ metals. Earlier, ya sounded like ya planned ta go all the way to makin’ ingots, but that ain’t necessary. We’ll handle that part ourselves.”
D-dwarven secret techniques… Yeah, that definitely sounded believable. And if it was a dwarven secret, humans would never be taught it. Humans probably already understood that too, so they wouldn’t even ask.
From that day onward, I began visiting the ore sorting facility in town twice a day, diligently using alchemy magic to extract metals.
Officially, it was “to study alchemy.”
As the heir of the baron house, it was supposedly education for my future.
The truth was known only by the foreman and the dwarves working here.
They were a race known for being tight-lipped and loyal. Father personally guaranteed they’d never leak the secret.
So I trusted them. The dwarves Chichiue-dono trusted.
On top of that, with the foreman and the others helping me, I alchemized all sorts of things.
Mostly tools to improve excavation efficiency in the mines.
Their name was simple and direct:
The drill!
Well, electricity didn’t exist in this world, so the drill rotation was manual.
At first, I tried making a handheld version through alchemy, but when the workers actually used it, the vibrations and weight made it inefficient.
So first, I alchemized caterpillar tracks. That required imagination, and I completed them only after repeatedly refining the concept in my head.
Then I attached them to a sturdy box, mounted the drill onto that box, and repeatedly improved it so the angle could be adjusted too.
And then, two months later…
“Boss, that thing’s amazing. It tears through hard rock walls like nothin’, and all we gotta do is turn the handle, so we don’t even get tired. Digging efficiency’s shot through the roof.”
“Wahahaha. Hear that, boya? Thanks to yer invention, we’ll be mining ore like crazy from now on.”
Saying that, the foreman slapped my back.
He was probably holding back, but a dwarf and a small child were still completely different things. My body staggered, and I nearly fell over before the foreman hurriedly caught me.
It hurt, but… It was a happy kind of pain.
What do you think about this chapter?
