#030
“Right, but…”
Come to think of it, to buy and sell things, I needed to know the market prices to some extent, but I had no idea about current prices. When I was playing the game, I bought and sold at fixed prices so I didn’t particularly pay attention, but now prices were fluctuating wildly and I had no sense of what to charge.
But Eira placed a money pouch on the table herself.
“This is all I can give you. I’d like to give more but I don’t have money. Even if you go sell it in the city, you won’t get much more than this anyway. But the Melbrain…”
Glancing at the Melbrain still lying on the table, Eira gulped. I could clearly feel her regret.
“Never sell Melbrain for less than 200,000 Rual per root. They’ll try to lowball you much cheaper, but if you just say you won’t sell, they’ll hold on.”
200,000 per root!
My eyes widened. Then how much is all this worth? I thought of the Melbrain I had. Wasn’t it at least seven roots? Then that would be 1.4 million Rual! That much would get me out of immediate poverty!
But if Melbrain as a medicinal herb was that expensive, then how much would potions made from it cost? I immediately asked the expert in front of me about this curiosity.
“Why is Melbrain so expensive? What do you make with this?”
“It’s what you’d call an A-grade healing potion.”
Eira explained with a serious face.
“It immediately recovers about 30% of damage received from monsters. But Melbrain’s important effect is that when you’re poisoned by any kind of toxin, it buys you some time until you can find an antidote. Usually other healing potions, even A-grade ones, can’t be effective against specific poisonings.”
“Then how much do Melbrain potions cost?”
“500,000 Rual per bottle. One root goes into each bottle. Of course other medicinal materials go in too.”
My eyes widened.
“Then you should just make potions with this and sell them. Why tell me to sell it elsewhere?”
Of course Eira said she didn’t have money to buy medicinal materials right now, but with that level of profit, couldn’t we work out some other deal? Like making and selling first, then splitting the profits.
“If I make them… there’s no one to buy them.”
But Eira brought up an unexpected story with a dejected face.
“No one to buy them?”
“My sales channels are blocked. There aren’t many people in the village who can afford such expensive medicine anyway. And with that incident spreading on top of that…”
“That incident? What incident?”
When I asked in bewilderment, Eira glared at me with raised eyes.
“You know, so why are you asking?”
I was flustered. What am I supposed to know? I only found out two days ago that I’m known as irredeemable trash here, so what else could there be? Eira looked down at the floor with her mouth tightly shut, then finally started talking again after a long while.
“Someone… there was an incident where poison was released into the lake and river. That contaminated the drinking water and caused mass deaths of fish. Dozens of people got food poisoning, and some actually died. But… I was pointed out as the culprit. That I… deliberately released poison into the lake and river to sell my antidote potions.”
Eira’s voice trembled as she clenched her fists, and her eyes reddened.
“I claimed innocence but no one believed me. They said my potion bottles containing poison were found all over the river and lake. I was banned from entering the village and distribution of potions I made was also prohibited.”
I unconsciously let out a hollow laugh. It was absurd.
“What kind of ridiculous story is that? There’s no way you’d do something like that.”
Though I had just been imagining that Eira might poison me, I didn’t seriously think that. That was just delusion.
Eira was just an ordinary person with a good nature. You never know what’s in someone’s heart, but I knew Eira’s heart well. After all, she was an NPC in the game, originally set up as a character who was innocently good and conscientious. Just look at how she treats me.
Of course, it’s not like there weren’t characters who had turned dark like Muchi or Carlisle… Especially bastards like Muchi probably had those seeds from the beginning. Even if she’d become prickly from being battered by hardships, I absolutely couldn’t believe that Eira had undergone a personality change like those guys.
But as if my words were unexpected, Eira seemed somewhat surprised. She also seemed moved that I believed in her. I felt a bit sorry for her.
“Then how have you been making a living since then? You couldn’t make and sell potions.”
“I somehow got by with what I gathered from my garden and the forest. But as time went on, the forest gradually became contaminated and my land couldn’t avoid contamination either… I somehow endured with purification potions and stamina potions I had stockpiled, but now I’ve run out of materials to make potions and the ways to get more are blocked… Now I’m somehow managing by eating one meal every other day…”
Eira’s voice gradually diminished.
“……”
Living on one meal every other day, yet Eira had given me two carrots. That was probably Eira’s meals for two days. And to a rotten bastard who had dumped her right after marriage for no particular reason. This was the kind of person Eira Wintum was. Even though she was an NPC, I felt a surge of wanting to help her somehow.
But I was also in a beggar’s situation with a long road ahead, so how could I?
Among what I had, the only thing that could immediately become money was Melbrain. But she said Eira-brand potions wouldn’t sell. At times like this, connections would be necessary, but there’s no way a failed farm owner and human trash like me would have connections… ah.
One promising connection came to mind. Of course, he wouldn’t think of me as a connection at all, and he was someone I wanted to avoid getting entangled with as much as possible… but it couldn’t be helped.
I pushed all the Melbrain toward Eira.
“Let’s make a deal. Use this to make the best potion you can.”
Eira’s eyes widened.
“I’ll try to sell the potion somehow. Instead, we’ll split the profits fifty-fifty. How about it?”
***
On the way back to the village, for the first time since entering this world, I felt pretty good.
I had emptied my backpack quite a bit at Eira’s house, but I filled that empty space with several bottles of potions. Eira had hurriedly made some stamina potions and healing potions for immediate use with the medicinal materials I had given her.
The hard work of the past two days had been worth it. My level had jumped up, I had some money, and I had established a cooperative relationship with the world’s best potionist. Eira’s favorability had jumped significantly and turned positive. It had leaped a whopping 180 points to reach 60. But my reputation was still stuck at -200 without moving.
‘They said raising main NPC favorability would work…’
I couldn’t tell if it took time to affect reputation or if it was an error. Well, even though I’d met Carlisle three times, he still wasn’t activated, and the character with the highest favorability was Muchi, so it wasn’t very credible.
‘Maybe it’s better to just ignore it.’
They did mention something about point accumulation, but it seemed like something nice to have rather than something that would cause problems if absent. If I ignored it, maybe something would be accumulated before I knew it.
When I entered the village, it was well past lunchtime. Since I had some money now, I briefly thought about having a proper meal at a decent restaurant for once, but in a time when a “proper meal” had become an incredibly luxurious act, I still didn’t have the leeway to spend money on that.
Fortunately, while Eira was making potions, I had made something like mushroom dishes and fruit salad with what I’d picked up in the fields and cave, filling my stomach. I also shared about half of the remaining food ingredients. Eira was first surprised that I had obtained clean, uncontaminated food ingredients, and seemed even more surprised and moved that I was sharing half of them. (Maybe my favorability went up a lot because of this rather than other things.)
The reality where she was moved by this much was a bit sad. I thought that when my situation improved, I should buy and bring plenty of food ingredients whenever I visited next time. Anyway, seeing someone happy from my small actions wasn’t bad at all.
“Oh, the workshop is…”
I was planning to deal with overdue quests first by going to city hall to meet the mayor, but on the way I saw that Seiz’s workshop was open. Remembering the work vest I needed to return to Elmer, I was about to open the door to stop by, then hesitated.
‘Wait, do I have any entanglements with this guy too?’
I briefly searched my memory.
‘None!’
I unconsciously sighed in relief. Workshop owner Seiz was a male NPC, so there was no way I would have triggered a romance event with him (so Carlisle was the only exception!), and he had no female siblings or female friends. He was a character with an extremely introverted personality who had no interest in other people or neighborhood gossip, and was the type who holed up in his workshop working except for taking walks in the early morning and evening when there were few people around.
Even if he had heard trashy rumors about me from customers, there was a high chance he had let it go in one ear and out the other. Even if he secretly despised me, he wouldn’t refuse business over it. After all, running a workshop was a matter of making a living.
Ding.
As soon as I calmed my mind and entered (though still somewhat nervously), I saw Seiz sitting facing the door.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
