“You do know I’m a blacksmith and not a metalworker, right lass?” the big tough taz snorted at me after looking at my concert stage plans, shoving it back to my side. He sounded offended for some reason, but I wasn’t sure why.
“I know, I know, but you should be able to make these trusses and pillars, right? If we provide you the necessary materials for them,” I pointed at the metal parts of my concert blueprint.
“Lass, coming to a tazong for all your metal needs ain’t gonna work when the bladdarg tazong’s smithy is smaller than what an apprentice gets to work in. By Crustacia’s twintails, you’ve seen my wagon, that ain’t got enough space to smelt these giant bars,” Grimnir finally explained. “Anyways, the carpentry parts are for an elf. Stone and metal are dwarven specialties, but you ain’t getting me to make something when my tools ain’t gonna cut it.”
Grimnir had been pretty proud when he described how he made his wagon during our first visit, informing us how long it took for each of the multiple iterations until the forge was large enough to his liking. Since he had experience building something like that, I thought it would be smart to let him look over the blueprint for my concert stage. But, I guess I didn’t think about the possible issues very thoroughly.
“I have already asked the merchant guild’s branch master if there are any metalworkers in Cedaraille, but he denied knowing any. Well, that is to be expected without a nearby mine,” Saori sighed as she looked at the blueprints. “Still, I think we should order the raw materials in case we find somebody who can turn them into something usable. I think ordering an obscene amount of ore as the initial suggestion would be best. We can prod Newt if he would accept it or if he will reduce it to something he believes would be manageable. What do you think, Ellaine?”
“I think that would be for the best. Concerning the lumber, we could either have Mister Newt buy whatever amount we believe we need, or we can do it ourselves and cut down trees. Hestia, do you think you can sand the timber smooth enough for you to walk on?”
“Hmm? I thought you were a priestess but you’re also a carpenter?”
Seeing Grimnir’s bafflement, I pulled out a chair and table from my storage, the ones I made for our party’s restaurant. Both pieces of furniture were simple and made out of wood, without any elegant designs or symbols carved into them, since I wasn’t able to translate these ideas into practice yet. Touching my own work, I could feel the smooth surface on my fingers as I rubbed against them.
“Hmm, decent work. Nothing to complain about if you’re not comparing it to elven craftsmanship. Ha, the last thing I thought an Aurena priestess would know is [Handicraft]; usually, you’re too ‘pure’ to consider anything but the artistic pursuits,” Grimnir snorted, giving me an idea of how a dwarf viewed the Church of Aurena. Aurena was the humans’ patron goddess, meaning Artorians like Ellaine who worship her were the majority, making it interesting for me to hear the opinions of other races.
“Well, I’m not your typical white robe,” I shrugged dramatically as I said that, believing it was fine that I wasn’t how people would envision a priestess.
As we were talking, a waitress from the street eatery we were currently visiting finally brought out five full bowls of food to our table. In them, pink rice was glimmering under the noon sun, adorned with scrambled fried egg, pieces of long onion strips, diced ground meat, and plenty of sliced mushrooms. The smell steaming from this bowl was stimulating my nose, causing my mouth to water and my mind to feel invigorated. This was proof of the chef’s hard work.
As I bit into it, the umami-filled rice began to cover my tongue, invoking a smile on my face. The scrumptious pieces of meat and egg mixed well with the rice as a unique sour taste drove my brain to remember it for the future. The crunchiness of the onions and the spongy taste of the mushroom gave this rice bowl the necessary texture to feel pleasing.
Gasper Wasp Rice Bowl
A rice bowl made using Gasper Wasp organs. Any lingering toxicity was eliminated during the cooking phase, where the rice was colored pink after the organs mixed with cepillium
Cepillium was what Peolyncians called onions, which were actually toxic in this world until you cooked them, as raw cepillium could give you a terrible stomach ache. Trust me, I experienced it once. Which makes it sound weird that the people in Cedaraille are actually mixing it with gasper wasp organs.
Yes, gasper wasps, the giant wasps we fought in the dungeon which had venomous stingers. They weren’t part of the local environment per se, but since they could be hunted in the dungeon, people seemed to have gotten creative with them. When we asked the hunter guild for the prices of the gasper wasp meat, they told us they were almost as cheap as kobold and goblin meat.
Well, I won’t complain if they can make eating bugs delicious. Although, it is rather lacking in spices.
“Hahaha! Great! Waitress! Davincz kazan ungari! Give me as much as the bowl can be filled up again, lass!” Grimnir trumpeted to the waitress with an empty bowl.
When the waitress brought him another bowl, Saori couldn’t help but frown at him. “…Why exactly are we treating him to food, Hestia? From the looks of it, his appetite seems to be as terrible as ours…” She was unenthused with the idea of treating Grimnir to more than one bowl of food.
When I explained how long we had to wait for her outside the merchant’s guild, Saori sighed and ignored the fact that Grimnir was ordering more bowls. Well, it wasn’t like Saori and I could stop eating, ourselves; we, too, followed Grimnir’s example.
“Ooooooh? With how scrawny you two looked, I didn’t think you would have such an appetite,” Grimnir noted. I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m more muscular than when I was on Earth, so I don’t know what to say to his remark. “Well, you two eat healthier than those two.”
Saori and I looked over to Tasianna and Ellaine. Tasianna was already done with her bowl but was staying quiet, not ordering anymore since she preferred vegetable dishes over meat. If something Saori cooked was too meaty, Tasianna would usually cook something for herself, only eating meat dishes if she wanted to improve her own cooking skills.
Ellaine on the other hand…
“How is it?” I asked her.
“Uhm, well, it certainly is special. Using such weird monster parts for ingredients… it looks like the… people are being creative. It certainly fits how the duchy’s ancestors lived…” Ellaine looked at the pink rice with suppressed disgust. “It wasn’t terrible… but where are the spices? The cepillium and wasp innards are the only source of taste; it is so one-dimensional, relying purely on those two ingredients. I guess there's some harmony, though?”
“… She’s a human noble, yeah?” Grimnir asked me, to which I nodded.
How often has Ellaine eaten stuff only served to nobles? Pretty much her whole life. How often has she eaten stuff from Saori? Quite often up until now. How often has she eaten simple grilled meat and fish? Once, and that was during our duo hunting week. Now, how often has she eaten street food? This was her first try.
“… I just gained [Poison Resistance Lv. 1] from eating this…” Ellaine’s mortified face seemed to have turned slightly pale from that announcement. Before she actually got sick, we gave her bowl of rice to Grimnir and promised to cook something more “normal” later on.
While giving her [Poison Resistance] might not have been our initial plan, getting Ellaine used to common food was one of the goals. Greenveil nobles are supposedly known as gourmets due to how bountiful the harvest can be in their duchies, which led to most of them becoming extremely picky eaters. Ellaine had her preferences on how her meat should be seared, how the vegetables should be cut, and how the dishes should be garnished.
For somebody who couldn’t cook herself, she had a list of details she wanted before feeling satisfied with her meals. Fortunately, she’s been very lenient concerning Saori’s cooking, which was good but not Michelin professional level, and also what we are selling to people in our restaurant, as we weren’t “serving nobles.”
After a hearty lunch, and giving Ellaine some cake and toffel chips to appease her, we returned to Grimnir’s wagon where I began explaining what our party’s next plans were. As we will stay in Cedaraille until SpringSun — about three weeks from now, as today was the 14th of WinterMoon — I told them I had decided to accept Grimnir’s request to hunt down a molten rock for his hammer.
“We need a blacksmith. If he can provide what we need, then I do not see anything wrong with helping him out. It is simply another step towards our goals,” Saori agreed to my idea. With Ellaine also agreeing, Aurora was unanimous in this decision. “Well, I am still not sure why we are not considering other blacksmiths, but okay.”
“A tazong is fully capable of besting any manling when it comes to smithing, wolfkin,” Grimnir grumbled at Saori’s offhand remark.
Saori waved her hand, not expecting the taz to suddenly feel offended like that, “I am not questioning you, Mister Grimnir, so please calm down. Anyway, are you completely unable to craft equipment? Even leather ones? If you could, I actually have a request that would demand your skills.”
Outside Grimnir’s wagon, Saori called her garms to emerge from her shadow. As if they were wet, the giant wolves shook their fur before staring down at Grimnir. Since people had trouble spotting the garms’ collars back in the dungeon, we had mana threads attached to their collars to act as LEDS once they poured mana into them; otherwise, their black fur would cover the collars up and people would assume that the garms were hostile monsters.
We still had to calm down a few people who saw the four appear, but once it was done, Saori had enough time to explain to Grimnir what she had envisioned. The garms needed more protection from attacks, so we planned to have leather armor made for them from a few C rank hides. Specifically, the hides from the trolls and orcs we’d killed recently.
“Please, take a look,” Saori showed the dwarf her obsidian claw protectors and displayed its ability to store and shoot venom. “This requires us to get a new hammer for you, but would you be able to recreate them for all four?”
Grimnir inspected the claw protectors on Saori’s hand, touching and analyzing the structure. “Ahhh, this was made by a tazong or somebody who can recreate our techniques. Hmm, I can’t remember which clan’s technique it was, but this is undoubtedly from an inko. Tazics have larger hands, more suited for big projects, while inkos can be almost as dextrous as elves when it concerns finer and more detailed work with their human-like hands. Hmph. It’ll be tough, but I can create something like this when it’s for your garms.”
“Woah, you can? From the sound of what you said, it honestly didn’t seem so,” I remarked in surprise from his last sentence.
“Hmph. You’re lucky you met the taz with milk drinking hands, unlike any other,” Grimnir said, eyes softened before patting Saori’s hand lightly. The difference between their hands was obvious from a distance — Saori’s was covered in fur and around the size of a normal woman’s while Grimnir’s were rough and hard like stone, looking larger than the average man’s. It reminded me a bit of Ogni’s, the dwarf who was responsible for our equipment in Firwood.
Did I say something wrong? I wondered as Grimnir’s face looked sullen.
Saori continued by also mentioning tools for her garms to carry her mana threads more easily. Up until now, Saori had to take her threads from her storage and throw them to her pack, which would waste precious time during a battle. Just as we girls needed gear to become stronger, so did our garms need their own gear.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Hmm, alright, I understand. Think of me making the leather armor and thread holders as your payment for helping me get that rock. Delving that deep into a dungeon without proper preparations is suicide, so if you four need anything, come over and I’ll try to craft it. Just, don’t ask for anything concerning metal weapons or armor,” Grimnir shook his head in annoyance. “I ain’t making something Bleidla can blame me for. The best or nothing at all.”
“Got it. We can take care of provisions and potions,” I patted Saori’s and Tasianna’s shoulders. “Do you mind if we spend some time getting ready in the dungeon? Leveling up, training skills, and getting a feel for the dungeon?”
“Take your time. I ain’t leaving this city until I get that magma rock or I die trying to get it, but I prefer doing the former, you hear? My pride ain’t gonna accept you lasses protecting me during the spelunking, so I’ll get myself ready, too. Don’t dawdle too much, though.” And with that, we said our goodbyes to Grimnir for the day. He was quite rough around the edges with moments of sadness I couldn’t understand, but one of our goals for coming to Cedaraille was set. Now, we just needed to get ready to reach it.
The first thing we needed to do was to fulfill the agreement related to the merchant guild contract Saori got for us, which meant I had to get my voice ready for tomorrow amongst a few other things. Saori went to the Chef’s Guild with Newt Sarlenzia’s letter of recommendation, getting our restaurant a good spot close to the two adventurer guilds and the merchant district to best serve our two main customers: Adventurers and merchants.
With the bureaucratic part dealt with, we now needed to make the rest of our preparations for tomorrow. Once back at the inn, our party rented a spot in the kitchen for ourselves, which the innkeeper gladly allowed after I offered to heal any problems he or his family had. The perks of being a white-robed priestess.
As our party had grown to four people, Saori decided to expand our menu by one or two dishes. Actually, the real reason was Saori’s increased confidence in the kitchen and that Ellaine promised to handle the ledger and numbers afterwards, saving Saori a good amount of energy which she could use to focus on cooking.
Tasianna was also feeling more comfortable around humans and believed she could use her catalyst to help serve our customers. She didn’t need to create ice daggers all the time, she could also mold the mana slime oozed from it to create flying trays to deliver drinks and food to the tables. She didn’t need to rush too much and could focus on customer service while her trays handled the rest.
What was Ellaine’s job in our restaurant? Well, she couldn’t cook, she was slow with cutting vegetables and meat, found washing dishes dull, and wasn’t a professional maid like Tasianna. There wasn’t much she could do except being a manager, taking care of our finances and also our rations, right? Wrong!
“Honestly, I never expected to play an instrument in front of others again,” Ellaine commented while polishing her geigler. “The last time was when I played it in front of you, Hestia, during our first meeting. Father and Mother practically forced me to practice in anticipation of your visit.”
“Oh, so you faked your joy back then. Sorry about that, Ellaine,” I replied, remembering how elated Ellaine had appeared back then, not expecting she was just acting happy and excited. “Well, who knows? After we’re done practicing together, we just might be ready for the opera in the capital.”
“You jest, Hestia. You are good, I am not.”
Color me surprised when I heard Griffonpeak had an opera where nobles performed in front of aristocrats and their associates, which included well-known merchants like Newt or vassal houses. An opera wasn’t a place for an idol, it was home for conductors and musicians like my parents; however, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t want to experience performing at one. I was raised by classical music and plenty of opera and broadway visits, after all.
While Ellaine thought I was joking, I do think Ellaine could be a decent musician with some more practice and confidence. So, performing with me during work hours was my way to help her grow more. She couldn’t do the manual work like Saori and Tasianna, but she was able to be artistic. Live music performances were part of Aurora’s trademark experience.
“Ok, our new menu will include our usual curry rice and stir-fried rice, as they are easy to make, but I will also add reuben sandwiches and tonkatsu rice bowls. Hestia, how is our yeast and rice supply?” Saori asked me.
A reuben sandwich is an American sandwich made out of meat, usually corned beef, grilled cheese, sauerkraut and dressing. I loved me some sauerkraut and I can’t wait to spread the love to Peolynca. Tonkatsu is a Japanese breaded, deep-fried pork Saori loved to eat back on Earth, and something she’s been planning to make again once we had the equipment, seasonings, and a ton of pork. And boy, did we hunt a ton of skorrs in the dungeon.
“We have enough yeast for making sandwiches. We’re fine for rice, too. We’ll have to prepare more sauerkraut though.”
Once our preparation for tomorrow was done, we took a good rest in the inn for tomorrow's workday. After setting the restaurant up, we faced the same challenge we had in Firwood, as people were intimidated by the fact I was a priestess, although this time it only took a few minutes for people to start becoming curious.
“Let the music play, let it enter your soul ♫
Rest your weary body here ♫
To a tune or melody ♫
Listen now, to a soothing remedy ♫
Listen now, let your stress disappear ♫
Let my song reach you, fill your heart with wonder and more ♫
Gaze up to the blue sky ♫
To smile to the light ♫
Listen now, you know what is right ♫
Listen now, don’t need to look so wry ♫”
The strong aroma of the curry, the frying tonkatsu, and the sauerkraut captivated everybody’s noses. Ellaine’s geigler and my singing brought people’s ears to listen to us. While people were looking over at us, nobody was taking the bait yet, so Tasianna approached a few onlookers and filled wooden cups full of water for everybody to see, announcing to everybody, “Restaurant Aurora is open!”
We opened the restaurant a bit before lunchtime, as we needed time to attract the first trailblazers to spread the name of our restaurant to people. Once prime time came during lunch, the people crowding around our restaurant was all the necessary advertisement we needed to bring hungry patrons flooding in.
“Tray 1 to table 2! Tray 2 is filled, to table 5! Tray 3 to table 5! Tasianna, let’s go!” Saori shouted as she filled trays with food before resuming cooking and preparing the next dishes.
“Got it, got it!” Tasianna stated resolutely, sending out multiple trays at once before taking the orders of the next set of guests.
All the while, Ellaine and I were going through our list of songs. All the songs I wrote on Peolynca were used up eventually, so I had to resort to Earth originals, like Renai Circulation, to fill up the time gaps. While I was doing that, Ellaine pointed out a carriage stopping over at the corner of the streets, a carriage with the symbol of the Sarlenzia Trading Company.
Hopefully, we impressed him enough.
After lunchtime was finished, I did some of my priestess duty with my usual 500 Davi fee, attracting quite a few people. As I requested money for my services, even if it was on the cheaper side, the local church hopefully won’t cause any trouble for me.
Once I was done, our party visited the merchant guild to finalize the contract with Newt Sarlenzia. With how much he showered Ellaine and me with flattery, I couldn’t help but feel like his words meant nothing. Maybe he did like my singing, but I didn’t get the feeling he was a fan or anything, more like a two-faced businessman. Well, he was one, so it kinda fits.
Anyways, after much debate, Newt finally agreed to the amount of ore Grimnir estimated should be enough for the truss, the foundation, and the rest of the metal equipment, while the merchant guild would put in an order for wooden floorboards for us. More than what we needed, as we presumed some might get destroyed during use.
The guild master then brought us to the supply room of his company where we exchanged fulinoe leaves, Belzac herbs, and other Belzac products for a hefty supply of ingredients and food. His company didn’t trade ore or metal, so he’d have to have some transported from a southern mining town in the Lecartiglio duchy. We then promised to introduce him House Helvas for the yeast deal.
Before we left, I had something to say to him, “Mister Newt, could you send a message to Lord Duke Greenveil for me? Please, ask him if we could borrow one of his [Crystals of the Divine System] for personal use.”
As it would take far too long to go into the dungeon, train until we maxed out our jobs, and then return to the surface where we could change our jobs again before continuing this cycle, Ellaine suggested asking Duke Greenveil for a crystal we could carry around. There was a crystal at the entrance of the dungeon — rented by the hunter’s guild so we had the 1000 Davi fee applied here, too — but imagine us venturing down to floor eight and then having to go back up. It’s a slog.
Ellaine already made it clear that these crystals were extremely expensive to produce, as it would require the destruction of a dungeon core, and new dungeons pop out rarely. When a dungeon does appear, people would definitely want more, since more [Crystals of the Divine System] weren’t bad to have.
However, if Duke Greenveil had any spares, then Ellaine thought he might be willing to share one with us since, you know, we stopped a diplomatic crisis for him and his kingdom. It was a small request, right?
However, it seemed we were fresh out of luck. “I apologize, Lady Hestia, but I am sure Lord Duke Greenveil does not possess any spares at this moment. He recently granted one to the Lord Marquess Sirius, as I heard the latter wished to rebuild the mages and alchemy guilds. The previous alchemy guild was somehow destroyed, and the [Crystal of the Divine System] loaned to them was destroyed along with it.”
… Why is all our bad luck caused by myself? Just why? Why did I have to blow up that whole place? Just why?
Well, I guess it’s fine that the Marquess didn’t just fine us for it. I probably should be happy he decided to give us an IOU despite what I did. Asking him to borrow a crystal would be the height of shamelessness…
With that idea out of the window due to my overkill, I left the merchant guild building with a downcasted head. We then took the rest of the day off before returning to the dungeon the next morning. That was when our training arc finally began.
For a whole week, we trained the heck out of any Job we acquired, going through them as fast as possible while also training Ellaine’s abilities. We mostly stayed on floor eight — a beautiful, mystical forest — as that was the spot Ellaine could train the best. She had to level up her skill levels independently while Saori, Tasianna, and I roamed the floor hunting down monsters for experience to funnel into our Jobs and Ellaine.
In this entire time, I had [Will to Fight and Survive] on 24/7. It was not only to keep ourselves in tip-top shape to continue hunting monsters down, but it was also to prevent Ellaine and Tasianna from breaking down in exhaustion. Their Stamina was far less than Saori’s and my own, so we had to push them to continue grinding. Even I got kinda sick of hearing my own song after all that time, but grinding wasn’t about being enjoyable, it was being ruthlessly efficient.
Holy shit, fuck grinding arcs! They are terrible! This reminds me of my days in Belzac, verdammt, how did I… Okay, I got kinda soft from living in civilization again.
Saori and I were unlucky when it came to our main level as it wouldn’t budge from the experience, but Tasianna and Ellaine enjoyed all the benefits from the grind. Job, skill, and personal levels all rose up. SP was spent if we needed a boost. The training was pretty rewarding overall, but maybe it was for the best if we chilled out with the next training arc, since I have to say it got dull pretty fast.
After a week of training, everybody decided it would be for the best if we stopped for now and called over Grimnir to venture with him deep into the dungeon. Leveling on floor eight had its limit when Ellaine and Tasianna started having trouble leveling up there. Sure, it meant we couldn’t level up our Jobs anymore, but we could get Ellaine to the necessary skill levels to survive with SP after she begins raising her personal levels again.
Our goal was an area with the possibility of B rank monsters. Ellaine had to be competent enough to survive against C rank monsters at the very least with Saori and me around.
Thanks to buying all the stat growth-boosting skills at the very beginning, she gained a massive boost in strength after all the leveling. Now, it was time we continued with it.
“Well, hope you lasses are ready. It’s gonna be a rough time after floor ten,” Grimnir, equipped with heavy armor thicker than my hand, announced to us after we called him over. In his left hand was a bag of equipment for Saori’s garms, who all managed to level up to five, while his right hand carried a large warhammer with an almost steampunk-like design. “Got your stuff. Leather is at least something I can make without needing a hammer. If there are any monsters I think we can use to upgrade the armor, I’ll tell you. It’s gonna be a trip.”
Time to go dungeon delving.
Party Leader
Name: Hestia Atsuko Kargryxmor Level: 83 Job: Crimson-Scaled Dreadgiver
Health: 5573/5573 Mana: 18472/18472 Stamina: 3461/3461
Effects: [Humanized (Moderate)][Damaged Mana Path [Left Wing] (Minor)]
Name: Saori Segawa Level: 80 Job: Shadow Warrior
Health: 5422/5422 Mana: 4317/4317 Stamina: 4789/4789
Effects: [Humanized (Moderate)]
Name: Tasianna Marina Silverpond Level: 61 Job: Fae Whisperer
Health: 2824/2824 Mana: 7845/7845 Stamina: 2778/2778
Effects: [Elvenized (Major)]
Name: Ellaine Fiero Helvas Level: 44 Job: Magus
Health: 1541/1541 Mana: 2035/2035 Stamina: 1261/1261
Name: Grimnir Luedbrumdar Level: 61 Job: Blasthammer Gunner
Health: 5791/5791 Mana: 1109/1109 Stamina: 5471/5471