The Road to Carriage*6
“Maybe we really should specialize in monsters too…”
“Eh!? You’re going to increase your slimes!?”
“Yeah no, I’m giving up on that.”
… Well, I thought about it for a moment and quickly reached the conclusion: “A monster-specialized dungeon just isn’t right for us.”
Because right now, we only have slimes.
… I’m pretty sure that monster-specialized dungeons, including this one we just saw, were in places where monsters already lived even before the dungeon formed. Otherwise you can’t do the initial disassemble-absorb-reconstruct steps. And if you run a dungeon without being able to do that, the dungeon naturally grows in a non-monster-specialized direction…
“… Well, adventurers who were injured and thinking of retiring are coming to Panis Village now too. Switching to a monster-specialized model at this point just feels wrong.”
“I see. Yeah, that makes sense.”
“As someone who was originally injured, hearing you say that makes me grateful.”
… Yeah. Panis Village is already established as Panis Village, and I don’t want to mess up the balance now.
There’s appeal in a dungeon with no monsters, and like Panis Village, you can use that to develop the dungeon and the village together. So—yeah, we won’t go monster-specialized. That’s the decision.
“But what about keeping a Pegasus? Just one? Please?”
“Pegasus don’t even exist here.”
… Mishisia-san drooped a little. A Pegasus… well, a flying horse is pretty interesting. But she’ll have to settle for our flying fluffball Mewmya…
Now then.
With that, we left the dungeon. We saw two monsters. We learned a lot. And it made me appreciate our slimes even more…
“… Well, it did fire me up a little.”
More importantly, it made me feel like, “I’m sticking to my path!” I want to prove that my build is the strongest. Yeah.
“I’m going to prove that a library-population-boosted hot-spring-tourism hybrid is better than any monster-specialized dungeon!”
“Yeah! I don’t really get it, but go for it, Asuma-sama!”
Since we’ve gone out of our way to build a non-monster dungeon, even if the grass next door is green-green-green, I’ll just make my own grass shine even bluer.
“All right, if that’s settled, it’s back to carriages. We need to prepare Panis Village’s production system so we can mass-produce them.”
“You can’t mass-produce horses, Asuma-sama.”
“That’s right. In that case, what about increasing horse-type monsters?”
“Uwaaaah! The tempting allure of the monster-specialized dungeon strikes again—!”
… Well, there’s a lot to worry about. But I’m glad we came to see this dungeon today, and I’m fired up to use what we learned to improve life in Panis Village and secure more mana… yeah.
All right. Let’s do this.
And so we headed home. A carriage that barely shakes is comfortable. Sure, sometimes it still goes gakon! but not very often. The ride is basically like a train.
“If we can mass-produce this, logistics are solved… as long as we have horses!”
“Then next is horses!”
Yeah… the comfortable carriage trip is great, but the bottleneck is horses.
Horses… huh…
“How do you even increase horses?”
“Eh, buying them is the fastest, right? I think Lark Town sells some.”
So the reliable way to get horses is to buy them. If we can buy them, we should. The quality would be guaranteed. And I want to stay on good terms with Lark Town.
“… But horses are expensive.”
“Right…”
… Which raises the question: how many could we even buy?
Horses cost a lot to raise and still cost money after they’re grown. This world’s equivalent of cars. Of course they’re expensive.
“In that case… we really might need a horse-type monster… maybe Mewmya could do it?”
“I don’t think that’ll work, Asuma-sama. Mewmya’s job is sometimes to fly. If you hitch them to a carriage they can’t fly and they'll just mew-mew sadly.”
“Ah… right.”
Yeah, relying too much on Mewmya isn’t good. The right person in the right job.
“… What should we do about horses…”
“Let slimes pull it?”
“That would be way too slow…”
In my mind, a slime pulled the carriage with a mochi-mochi… mochi-mochi… pace, but no matter how I imagined it, it was slow. They just aren’t creatures connected to speed…
“… Guess I’ll make something.”
“Horses!? Eh!? You can make horses!? Asuma-sama, you can make a horse!?”
“No, not a horse. Something that can take a horse’s place pulling the cart.”
We arrived back in Panis Village. I’m hoooome!
“Oh, you’re lively today too.”
As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by the slimes. Lately they’ve been gathering at the entrance to welcome arriving people. Sometimes they surround you moch-moch. Stop!! I can’t move!!
“All right, let’s make it… the bike.”
With the slimes peeled off me, I started making a bicycle.
… First, I blasted through reconstruction without worrying about reproducing it exactly. So the tires are just rubber tubes.
“Then attach the bike to this…”
I hitched the finished bicycle to the Mewmya-style floating carriage.
… And then—
“Pull— ah! I can’t even ride the bike with this kid-sized body!”
“What are you doing, Asuma-samaaa?”
“Aaaaaaah whyyyy!!”
A finished bike!! And I can’t ride it!! What’s with this elementary-school body!? Uwoooooh!!
“Um—so I just straddle it and push off the ground?”
“I want you to pedal.”
“But I’ll fall!”
“You won’t fall! As long as you keep pedaling you won’t fall!”
So I had no choice but to put Mishisia-san on the bike. For testing.
She complained like an elementary schooler who can’t ride a bike, but after I chanted “You can do it you can do it you can do it,” she reluctantly got on.
“… Okay, I’ll pedal.”
“Go for it!”
She straddled the bike, pushed off… and with that momentum, started pedaling.
… And then—
“Oooooohhh! It’s moving! It’s pulling it just fine!”
“Asuma-sama! This is heavy! Heavy!!”
“Aaaaagh, I need to lighten the cart! But since it floats, I only need to lighten the axle supports! It’s convenient!”
Yeah.
A bike can pull a carriage.
Because the carriage body is floating, it’s ridiculously light! If it’s only pulling, even a bike works!
“Waaaah! Asuma-sama, Asuma-sama, Asuma-sama! Bikes are fun!”
“Yeah. Bikes are great.”
“Yeah! So great! Bikes!”
A few minutes later, Mishisia-san was addicted to the bike. This might be a great personal transport option. It’s not alive, so it doesn’t need water or grass like a horse.
“I want to show this to Lapere! I bet the Knights Order would adopt it!”
“… I really don’t like that idea.”
A bicycle Knights Order… that’s just not cool.
Anyway.
“The problem is whether we can mass-produce bikes, or if we still need some kind of horse alternative…”
While Mishisia-san happily rang the bell and zoomed around the village ding ding, I thought it over.
Bicycles are definitely something I want to spread. Among human-powered transport, they’re extremely efficient.
“But we don’t have the technology to make rubber tubes… hmm.”
Yeah, that’s the bottleneck. And I don’t want to start from “build the equipment to make the materials to make the equipment…”
“So then the wheels would have to be made of iron, making them heavy… that defeats the purpose of the bike… and the bike would shake like crazy…”
But I want a smooth ride. A super-shaky bike is awful.
“Weight reduction… maybe ‘floating’ could work, but without air-filled tires, you can’t deal with vibration…”
I worried. And worried. And worried hard.
While I worried, Mishisia-san rode circles around me, and the slimes she chased drifted over and gathered around me, and then they moch-moch pressed against me…
“Slimes… soft… bouncy…”
And then I got an idea.
“What if we used slimes as tire material?”
“No, Asuma-sama! That’s terrible! Poor slimes!”
“You’re right.”
My brilliant idea died instantly. Naturally. You can’t turn slimes into tires!
As I went back to worrying, Mishisia-san parked the bike with a thud from the kickstand.
“Um, Asuma-sama. Slimes have mana too, right?”
“Yeah?”
While being mochi-mochi pressed by slimes with me, she made a suggestion.
“If you want something ‘soft and springy,’ couldn’t we get some ‘soft and springy mana’ from them?”
“… Huh?”
Soft and springy mana.
Soft and springy mana.
What even is that?
… And then I stopped thinking.
What do you think about this chapter?
