“Aw c’mooon, Captain. Obviously, she’s not a forest spirit. She’s clearly a girl no matter how ya look at her.”
Just when Mariela had been wondering how to respond, a calm voice interjected.
A young man with hair the color of straw stepped down from one of the hunks of iron. He appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen years old, roughly Mariela’s age. The young man’s sharp eyes almost disappeared into a broad, affable smile.
“No, it’s just, she looks different.”
“This is a monster-warding skirt.” Mariela tried to draw attention to her herb dress’s functionality as opposed to its appearance.
“Anyway, are you from the Labyrinth City?” Captain Dick quickly brushed aside her attempt at an explanation. It didn’t seem to make any difference to him what the grass skirt was. Perhaps because he now knew he was speaking to a human, he immediately dropped into a more blunt manner of speech.
He was just a short distance away from Mariela now. This large, stern man clad in heavy armor over his muscular frame was rather daunting, and Mariela instinctively took a step back.
“Hey, hey, that was a monster-warding potion you used just now, yeah? Got any more of ’em?” The smiley youth cut in on Captain Dick before Mariela could reply.
Whoa, this guy is way too chummy! Interrupting his captain like that, really? And what’s this Labyrinth City?
When she glanced at Dick, she noticed he was examining her closely.
Between this and the smiley youth’s overly friendly attitude, Mariela felt rather uncomfortable. The heck was with the reaction to her cheap potion? This transportation crew had been traveling in armored carriages through the main road of the Fell Forest without any monster repellant. And then there was a place called the Labyrinth City she’d never even heard of. What had happened while she was asleep?
“I only have these potions left. I need money, so I was on my way to sell them,” she answered cautiously. She felt a slight twinge of regret at having rushed into things out of sheer loneliness, but she nevertheless opened her pouch and showed them its contents. It wasn’t a lie, nor was she telling them any more than they needed to know.
“Whoa, three monster-warding potions and five low-grade heal potions? That really was a hot commodity you used there.”
Although the young man was still some distance from her, he recognized the contents of the pouch.
He’s gotta be more than ten steps away from me…but his eyes widened in an instant. Seriously, they’re practically glowing!
At the words hot commodity, Captain Dick glanced at the young man and then took a step toward Mariela while continuing the conversation. Yet again, she felt uncomfortable as the gap she’d created between them closed once more. The captain’s armor and their proximity to town didn’t suggest him to be a thief, but if she was mistaken, he could be about to demand she hand over all her potions. Mariela clamped her mouth shut and steeled herself for what he might say next.
“Hrm. We could have managed, but the fact is that you helped us. What do you say we purchase those potions from you, including the one you used?”
“Huh? You’ll buy my potions?”
Why had he been acting all intimidating just moments before? If he wanted to buy them, he should’ve come out and said it. Mariela cocked her head once more.
✦ ✦ ✦
Score one customer! And I didn’t even have to haggle with the guy.
When Mariela agreed to sell her potions, the captain responded with “I see; thank you,” followed by a small sigh of relief.
Huh? Was Captain Dick relieved just now? I wonder if there’s an herb shortage that’s making potions hard to get. If that’s the case, maybe he’d buy them at a good price. I’d love a hot meal and a bed to sleep in, even at a cheap inn. And since I’m fuzzy on a lot of things, maybe they could tell me what happened after the Stampede, too.
The sudden business negotiation had Mariela daydreaming about dinner.
“As for the payment… Let’s see.”
The other cavalryman, who’d been watching in silence this whole time, walked over to Captain Dick and whispered something in his ear.
Cut it out; this is bad for my heart. I don’t need it stopping again.
What could they be talking about? Were they going to confiscate her potions after all? It wasn’t as if they were terribly expensive, but she was trying as much as possible to avoid having Fell Forest mushrooms for dinner and then curling up to sleep under the eaves of some person’s house. She’d be fine with foregoing meat as long as she had some warm soup. As Mariela’s stress grew, Captain Dick finally named a price.
“How about five large silver coins for the nine potions?”
“……Huh?”
Mariela froze in shock.
Okay, calm down, Mariela. I swear I felt like my heart was gonna stop. But I’m fine; that’s not going to happen. It still works. In fact, it’s pounding like mad.
Back in the Citadel City, the market price of both monster-warding and low-grade heal potions was around five copper coins. In the forest, ten copper coins would be considered a good price, though it was a rip-off for the buyer.
Even as a reward, just a single silver coin—worth one hundred copper ones—for nine potions would have been a lucky sale.
He said large silver coins, right? And five of them to boot. A large one equals ten regular silver coins, so that’s…a fiftyfold increase? Has hyperinflation driven up the cost of goods? Like, does a loaf of bread cost fifty copper coins now?
Mariela didn’t know how Captain Dick would take her shocked reaction, but he looked a little flustered and corrected himself.
“Well, actually, we already saw the effects on the forest wolves earlier. The potion seemed freshly made. Hrm, how about one gold coin?”
Her shock had made the price go even higher.
Suddenly offering double? Which is two hundred times the normal price? Ummm, what’s going on here?!
She had no idea why she’d ended up with an offer two hundred times what her potions were worth, but if prices in general hadn’t gone up as much as potions had, she just might be able to enjoy a little meat in her soup that evening. Maybe she could even stay in a decent inn and have a bath.
In the end, Mariela sold Captain Dick the nine potions, including the one used on the forest wolves, for one gold coin. After she handed over the three monster-warding potions and five low-grade heal potions, he placed them in a special box inscribed with a magic circle for long-term storage and securely closed it.
Oh, that’s one of those things you use to store high-grade potions. It’s a magical apparatus that preserves Drops of Life’s effects. I’m an alchemist, and I don’t even have one. They’re expensive and use magical gems for preservation.
If you took a potion too far away from the region it was created in or, more precisely, out of range of the ley line the Drops of Life was drawn from, the power would escape in an instant and render the potion into ordinary medicinal water. Putting the potion in a special storage box curbed degradation no matter where you took it, so it wouldn’t be strange for a group that passed through multiple regions like the Black Iron Freight Corps to have one. Mariela had also heard of wealthy families who stored mid- and high-grade potions in this way as a substitute for household medicine.
Considering the cost of the magical gems required for storage, it wasn’t worth it for low-grade potions that were originally inexpensive. But then, it was a different story for ones worth a large silver coin each.
The man who’d whispered to Captain Dick during the price negotiation provided the payment.
In contrast to the stern captain, he was slender and elegant. He had wavy, dusty-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and emerald-green eyes. From his refined manners, he seemed like something of an aristocrat.
“Thank you for your help earlier, miss. I’m Malraux, lieutenant of the Black Iron Freight Corps.”
“My name is Mariela. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner.”
Having forgotten to introduce herself, Mariela took the opportunity to formally do so as she accepted Lieutenant Malraux’s payment.
“Oh, nice! Gee, that’s a great name. Really suits your style. I’m Lynx, nice to meetcha.”
The smiley youth introduced himself in turn. It embarrassed Mariela a little to be praised to her face like this. Lieutenant Malraux resumed their conversation.
“Mariela, is it? Incidentally, do you have plans to sell other potions?”
Naturally, there was no smile in his eyes. He seemed to be saying that if she did have such plans, she should sell the potions to his group. Mariela wasn’t great at conversations where the participants were feeling each other out.
“If there’s anything you need, by all means ask” was her ambiguous reply. She was grateful they’d bought the potions at such a high price, but without being able to get a read on the situation, her sense of caution prevented her from giving an easy answer. Man, that was rough, she thought.