Unavoidable, Alcohol (1)
Yes. And today, as always, Panis Village is lively and well.
Even after the Royal Third Knights Order left, we’ve been working hard as usual.
However…
“Ugh… ngh…! Gyuh…!”
“Oh my, what’s wrong, Asuma-sama? Making such strange noises…”
“Good morning, Edele-san! I’m currently! In distress!”
… I’m writhing on the ground. Why, you ask? Well, it’s like this…
“The population’s gone up! It’s safer now! So I want to thank Princess Laperesiana somehow! But I don’t know how! Also, there aren’t enough jobs in the village!”
This all goes back to right after the Royal Third Knights Order returned to the royal capital.
… After Princess Laperesiana and her group caught that band of assassins and went home, apparently things in the castle got… well, tangled and complicated.
Of course they did. I mean, when word gets out that “the Third Princess—accomplished, popular among the people, and highly trusted by her subordinates—was targeted for assassination by the Second Prince’s faction”, well, yeah… that’s bound to cause a mess.
Regarding that, the Second Prince’s stance was, “It wasn’t my fault. My faction members acted on their own. I’m a victim too.” Basically, the classic scapegoating approach. Figures.
Then his supporters started yelling, “You’re abandoning us!? We did all this for you, Your Highness!” And so, the ones who ended up punished began spilling all kinds of dirt on the Second Prince’s other misdeeds. Those who escaped punishment thought, “There’s no future following the Second Prince…” and began defecting one after another.
Now, the Second Prince and his mother—the king’s consort—are apparently working desperately to deal with the fallout. Or rather, they’re digging themselves a deeper hole in the process.
… Meanwhile, the First Prince—who’d already been pushed by the Second Princess—is now getting another shove from the Third Princess, Princess Laperesiana, and has finally begun to move his lazy royal behind.
He’s apparently the type who’s capable when he wants to be, just lacking motivation. Seems he said, “Anyway, we’d better wrap up this whole Second Prince issue quickly,” and started working in earnest.
Now then.
While the royal castle is in chaos over politics and all that, there was also another uproar there.
Of course, it was: “Princess Laperesiana’s wounds are gone!? What happened!?”—that sort of uproar.
To this, Princess Laperesiana declared, “Through the mercy of the Panis Village Dungeon, all members of the Third Knights Order were healed.” At the same time, she warned, “We owe a great debt to the Panis Village Dungeon. Should anyone show disrespect toward it, I will personally deal with them.” Much appreciated!
… Thanks to that, the population of Panis Village has increased. And since many newcomers say, “We don’t want to get executed by Princess Laperesiana! We’ll behave properly!” things are a whole lot easier. Truly a blessing!
The first to arrive were researchers.
People who used to study healing and medicine came saying, “Perhaps the dungeon holds the secret of restorative power!”
Then there were the magic scholars saying, “We’ve heard Panis Village Dungeon produces high-quality, mana-rich magic stones! With those, our research can advance!”
And, of course, the dungeon researchers: “We’re here to study this mysterious dungeon!”
… Then came the adventurers.
Apparently, the strong, dignified, and beautiful Princess Laperesiana is extremely popular among adventurers. So, since it’s a dungeon acknowledged by her, many came for “pilgrimage” or to “experience the same miracle that blessed Princess Laperesiana.” The dungeon’s fame spread, and more people followed.
A lot of them are folks like, “I got injured and retired from the front lines, so I’ll try gem mining for a living. If I happen to be healed by the dungeon’s mercy, that’s a bonus.”
Well, that kind of need is exactly what this dungeon fulfills, so it’s all within my expectations.
For their sake, I expanded the hot springs. Now Panis Village has baths like “The Spring That Soothes Old Wounds,” “The Spring That Heals Burns,” “The Joint Relief Bath,” and “The Silky Smooth Skin Bath.” … Basically, they’re all medicinal baths at this point. We’ve even started selling the medicinal herbs produced by the slimes!
Thanks to that, more people come for therapeutic stays. And then there are those saying, “I heard about the silky-smooth skin! I’m here for beauty treatment!”—so now we’ve got rich folk coming too. So I expanded the luxury inn originally built for Princess Laperesiana and turned it into operation.
Naturally, the wealthy spend big, so Panis Village’s economy is booming… Though, to be honest, I’m barely keeping up—patching things together with hasty measures and relying on my reconstruction ability to provide a lot of the village’s supplies. Still, something to improve over time.
… Anyway, all of that’s great. Especially the increase in researchers—it’s led to the royal library saying, “Since there’s more demand, we’ll increase the frequency of our mobile library visits.” Which means I can absorb tons of information and mana from books easily now. Truly a blessing!
But!
“Hey, why did you multiply?”
… Right in front of me are massive slimes. Lots and lots of them.
“Uh… I already had enough of the big ones, though…”
So yeah… as the village’s population grew, mana increased, and somehow that led to the slimes multiplying. And not just any slimes—giant ones. All of a sudden.
“What should I do…? Why are only the big ones multiplying…?”
“But Asuma-sama, you seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Yeah.”
I mean, come on—it’s giant slimes! Of course I’m enjoying it. For now, I’m lying on top of one, bouncing gently on its soft body. Then when the slime feels playful, it absorbs me halfway and spits me out with a “whoaah!”
“Besides, lately scholars have been coming just to study the slimes… isn’t that fine?”
“Is it, though…?”
Yeah. Among the researchers visiting the village are slime specialists. Apparently, “There’s no other place where slimes can live this freely! Usually, mana gets stolen by other monsters, or they get eaten after spawning!” Makes sense. No one here eats slimes, after all.
“Maybe we should build an inn filled with slimes? I bet people would love it!”
“Really? But they’re so unpredictable…”
See, slimes are basically whimsical. You can’t tell them, “Stay here forever!”
They’re more like, “They’re usually around here,” or “They come for fertilizer and water every day,” or “Their numbers go up and down randomly.”
At this point, even I don’t know the exact number anymore.
So it’s hard to make them a consistent tourist attraction… but then again, the “Hot Spring Where You Can Bathe with Slimes” is kind of trending. Maybe slimes can be a tourist draw?
… Or maybe they’d make good luxury bedding material…?
Anyway, while giant slimes are multiplying, there’s one slime that’s become the talk of the village.
Yes. Generic-kun. The mysterious slime that started glowing after drinking a ton of World Tree Potions.
Since then, he’s been chilling and squishing around inside the cave, so I made a few small watering springs for him. Generic-kun is very pleased.
… He usually spends his time near the Jewel Tree, squishing and glowing around.
Recently, some adventurers who cleared the dungeon happened to bump into him there, so… I had no choice but to let Generic-kun hand out World Tree Potions again. The adventurers went home healthy and happy. Congratulations. Congratulations.
“By the way, why does Generic-kun glow, anyway…?”
Now, about Generic-kun… yeah, he’s glowing mysteriously. Really glowing. Apparently, it depends on his mood, but when he’s in the mood to shine, he lights up like a disco mirror ball—it’s ridiculously bright. The dungeon’s basically a party now. What even is this?
“Hmm, maybe because he’s got too much mana?”
“Mana makes you glow when you’ve got too much of it?”
“Huh? It doesn’t? It often does, doesn’t it?”
It glows? Huh? It glows, doesn’t it? … I thought maybe Mishisia-san would know more about this sort of thing, so I asked her—but honestly, I just don’t get this whole “fantasy” feeling…
… Yeah. I don’t get this fantasy sense of things at all.
So maybe I’ll try thinking about it using the knowledge from my world.
First off, mana seems to bundle together both the equivalent of elements and the equivalent of molecules under the single term “mana,” which is where things start getting complicated. So for convenience, let’s define the smallest unit that makes up fantasy energy as a “magic element,” and then define a “magic molecule” as a structure built from those magic elements that possesses a certain degree of fantasy energy.
Now then—if Generic-kun was glowing, that must mean that some kind of luminous magic molecule was being generated.
Yeah. Let’s hope that’s all it is. If a second or third layer of mysterious fantasy nonsense starts showing up now, I’m seriously out of my depth here!
… So, I decided to look into the reason why Generic-kun is glowing.
Right. Because I really want that glowing magic molecule myself!
I mean, come on—lighting that doesn’t need electricity or fire? That’s ridiculously useful! Sure, depending on the types and amounts of magic elements composing the molecule, it might not be all that practical—but hey, if it glows, that’s already amazing!
… So anyway, back to figuring out why Generic-kun glows.
After taking just a tiny sample apart to examine, it seems that when a certain structure within the World Tree–derived healing magic molecules is broken down, the leftover bits combine with other magic elements inside the slime, producing a new kind of magic molecule that simply glows.
That much I’ve figured out. Which means that thanks to my research on Generic-kun, I’ve now managed to harness this mysterious “glowing fantasy energy”!
… But, of course, that’s not the end of the problem.
“So what exactly did you remove from the World Tree’s healing magic molecules, and what combined to make them glow? And which part of the magic molecules did Generic-kun actually eat?”
To answer that, I compared the World Tree healing magic molecules with the glowing ones, and…
“I see! So if it eats the tasty parts of the magic molecules, what’s left over is the glowing part!”
Thus, it turns out that Generic-kun is a bit of a gourmet.
Specifically, it neatly eats only the “growth” or “high-nutrition” segments, and the leftover structure then combines with whatever magic elements are floating around in the slime, producing the glowing effect. That’s the gist of it.
“… So in short, we’ve also discovered a type of magic that’s just delicious.”
I couldn’t help but nod in deep understanding—of course growth and high-nutrient energy would count as “delicious” in fantasy terms. And it also made sense that such structures would exist in the World Tree’s magic molecules.
Yeah, taking things apart really does teach you a lot.
Alright then.
Now that I know why Generic-kun was shining, and I’ve gained all this new insight into the breakdown of mana…
“… I gotta create more jobs.”
I turned my thoughts to the current problems facing Panis Village.
Yep. Right now, Panis Village looks like it’s doing great. And in many ways, it really is.
Tourism’s growing, adventurer demand’s rising, and money’s flowing in from outside the village, making the place a lot more prosperous.
… But that’s about as far as it goes.
See, even if people come here for hot spring therapy, get healed, and say “Now I can work again! I wanna settle down here!”, the truth is—there aren’t many jobs.
And without jobs, there’s no income. So in the end, they can’t make a living here, and that means they can’t settle down.
Basically, we need workplaces.
Sure, tourism’s expanding, so there are some positions at inns and restaurants. But that kind of work has its limits… plus, it’s apparently pretty tough to manage as a side job for researchers.
… and so my thoughts began to spiral!
So yeah. I’ve got a lot on my mind these days.
“Princess Laperesiana’s been so good to us! And Panis Village doesn’t have enough jobs! Ugh, my brain’s gonna party explode!”
“Asuma-sama, calm down, calm down!”
Edele-san had to soothe me. Yeah, I’m the kind of creature who instantly calms down when hugged. It’s hopeless. I’m calm now.
“I think it’d be best to repay Princess Laperesiana’s kindness by welcoming her warmly when she visits again. She seems to really like this village, after all…”
“Yeah, I’ll go with that idea…”
She’s right. If I’m thinking of repayment, hospitality’s the way to go. No doubt about it.
“Then that means we still need to deal with the job issue, right? Asuma-sama, do you have any ideas?”
“Yeah. Nope.”
… So Mishisia-san and I put our heads together, but, well, nothing brilliant came to mind right away.
“… If we had more scholars settling here, we could maybe turn the library into a public village library and hire librarians or something… but that’s not realistic right now.”
I thought through all sorts of possibilities, but still, it feels like the tertiary sector’s a no-go.
“But agriculture’s already covered… and animal husbandry’s already moving along under Edele-san’s lead…”
“That’s right. We can finally eat eggs regularly now.”
Yeah, our livestock industry started with poultry. We’re also starting to raise cows and pigs, but it’ll still take time before meat becomes stable on the menu.
Anyway, since we already have livestock, if we’re going to create new jobs, then… hmm.
“Maybe something in the primary or secondary industries…”
“Asuma-sama, what’s a ‘primary industry’?”
“Ah, that’s the kind of work where you produce stuff directly. Secondary industry means using those products to make things.”
I gave Mishisia-san a little explanation while rubbing my temples.
“One thing I’ve been considering is textile work—spinning, weaving, that kind of stuff. But the materials… unless I provide them myself, it won’t really work, so I’m kinda on the fence…”
Yeah, I figured textile production might be perfect. Even simple machinery would count as pretty advanced tech in this world, so it’s a good field for innovation.
But… if we go into fabric production, the big question is: where do we get the raw materials, the fibers?
There’s no cotton. Hemp might be doable, but it grows tall, so slime-based cultivation would be tricky.
And there aren’t any silkworms around either… So yeah, materials are the real bottleneck.
… But wait—maybe I could just handle the material production myself, and let Panis Village handle the weaving and sewing? That might work. If it helps secure more local workers, I could just reconstruct the raw materials myself somehow…
“Oh! Then what about that? You know, the tomato liquor!”
Just as I was lost in thought, Mishisia-san piped up with an idea.
“It was so good! Princess Laperesiana really liked it too, right?”
“Ahh… but that’s because it’s made fresh, mixing in tomatoes right on the spot. That’s where the flavor comes from, I think.”
“Yeah, but the strong liquor before adding the tomatoes—that wasn’t bad either.”
Wait, you drank that? You drank ethanol? Huh? So Mishisia-san’s insanely good with alcohol, huh?
…Yeah, I’m just not gonna think too hard about that. But honestly, the more I consider it, the more I think she might be onto something.
“…Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if there were alcohol made from something other than what I reconstructed…”
Yeah—alcohol, the ultimate indulgence. “Liquor” could be a perfect product for both village development and hospitality.
What do you think about this chapter?
