“Well then, to put matters simply,” Elrand began. He launched into an explanation, bringing me, Bram, the rest of the guild’s leaders, and Moira up to speed on why it might not be possible to butcher the leviathan after all.
According to Elrand, he’d spent the entire trip from his home to the capital reading and rereading a reference book on leviathans, barely even pausing to eat or sleep. One passage that had particularly grabbed his attention recounted the processing of a leviathan that had been brought to the Adventurer’s guild roughly four hundred years ago. That book, by the way, had apparently been the prized possession of another nation’s Adventurer’s guild. They’d actually refused to show it to Elrand, who’d been a C-ranked adventurer at the time, and he’d responded by snatching it when no one was looking.
What were you thinking, Elrand...? As in, what were you thinking when you stole the book, and what were you thinking just now when you admitted it to us? You could’ve easily kept that part to yourself, and then Moira wouldn’t have had to punch you.
Anyway, that digression aside, the book had contained incredibly detailed information regarding how the leviathan had been slain, how it had been butchered, and which parts had been sold for how much gold.
“Every bit of it, from the last drop of its blood to the smallest of its bones, fetched a high price,” Elrand explained. Moira and the higher-ups muttered about how unsurprising that was to one another. “They knew that would be the case, and so a magical tool was devised and crafted to ensure that none of its blood went to waste,” Elrand continued.
Apparently, this was something that had been on Elrand’s mind since I had asked him to butcher the earth dragon that we’d caught. Butchering a creature indoors on a workbench made collecting its blood relatively easy. All you had to do was tilt the work surface slightly, and the blood would flow exactly where you wanted it to. Butchering a dragon that was far too big to fit on a workbench, however, was a much taller order, and Elrand had known that as long as my familiars and I were around, it was a problem that he would be faced with sooner or later.
“And that’s why I made these,” Elrand declared with a rather self-satisfied grin as he brought what looked like a long, narrow tube out from his Item Box. “I’ve never been happier to have dabbled in magic tool creation. I may not be a master of the craft, but making simple tools is well within my abilities!”
“You mean making them with my help is,” Moira noted.
“Erk—with the help of Moira, the most esteemed and knowledgeable magical craftswoman! I made fourteen of them in total,” Elrand said. He explained that his tools used wind magic to produce a suction effect.
“All right, then. I take it you were planning to use those tools to drain the leviathan’s blood?” Bram asked.
“Yes! That’s exactly right!” Elrand replied.
“Well, if you put enough care and forethought into this project to craft tools like that, why are you telling us that butchering it might still be impossible?”
Right? He was excited enough to sink that sort of time and effort into this project. What could be a big enough issue to make him abandon it?
“Well, I believe that with my tools, recovering the leviathan’s blood should indeed be possible. But that’s just its blood,” Elrand specified.
At that point, the conversation finally looped back around to the book he’d read on his way to the capital about the leviathan that had been brought in four hundred years ago.
“The issue stems from the fact that the leviathan back then was quite a bit smaller than the one we’re dealing with now,” Elrand explained. Supposedly, there had been some suspicion four centuries prior that the slain leviathan had been a juvenile. Having inspected the one I’d brought in, Elrand was now certain that theory was true. “And even so, butchering the leviathan back then required the use of a dragon sword.”
It seemed they’d had a mithril butchering knife on hand, which had technically been capable of cutting through the leviathan’s hide, but not without applying an impractical amount of strength. Cuts made with the mithril knife had turned out rough and imprecise. At the time, however, the guild had been in possession of a dragon sword, which had been even sharper than a mithril blade. They’d tested it out just for good measure and had been surprised to find that it sliced through the beast with ease. In the end, they’d used the dragon sword throughout the whole process, ensuring that the leviathan’s extraordinarily useful materials could be harvested undamaged.
“And knowing all that, I naturally decided to bring my dragon sword along with me,” Elrand said. He drew the sword that was hung in a scabbard at his waist in a swift, fluid motion. “What do you think? A thing of beauty, isn’t it?! It was crafted from the fang of a red dragon! Just look at that luster!” he excitedly declared as he practically shoved the dragon sword in our faces. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d started nuzzling the thing. Elrand was incredibly consistent, if nothing else.
“How in all that is holy did you get your hands on one of those?” Bram demanded. The other higher-ups had started muttering to one another as well. Their reactions alone made it pretty clear that dragon swords were very rare.
Thwack!
“Aaaaaaugh!” Elrand wailed as he fell to his knees. He almost dropped his dragon sword, but just barely managed to hold on to it in the end—not that getting dropped on the ground could ever damage a weapon like that in the first place. “Wh-What was that for?! You can’t just kick people like that, Moira! I almost dropped my precious, beautiful dragon sword thanks to you!”
“You earned that kick, and you know it!” Moira shot back. “What do you mean, your dragon sword?! We both know very well that it isn’t yours at all! Ugohl told me the whole story—you bought the fang with your own money, but you couldn’t afford to have it made into anything and went into debt with the guild to cover the expense!”
Elrand gulped.
“W-Wait, seriously?!” I exclaimed. You went into debt, Elrand?! Are you nuts?!
Moira let out a long, heavy sigh. “He badgered Ugohl into agreeing to it. By which I mean he followed him around day in and day out, bawling like an infant and swearing that he’d put the finished sword up as collateral until he’d paid off his debt.”
“Ughp!” Elrand grunted.
What was that noise? And seriously, what were you thinking?
“Well,” Bram said with a roll of his eyes, “I think we can all agree that an extension of Moira’s tenure is in order.”
“Agreed,” the other higher-ups said in unison.
“Wh-Whaaat?! But why?!” Elrand wailed.
Why? Really? I can’t believe you have the nerve to ask that after bringing your private life into your day job that intrusively. This is totally on you, Elrand.
“But we’ve drifted from the point at hand,” Bram continued. “From what you’ve told us, butchering the leviathan should be possible with a dragon sword, which you have. I don’t see the issue.”
The other bigwigs and Moira muttered in agreement.
Elrand sighed. “Yes, well, if this was the leviathan from four centuries ago, there wouldn’t be an issue at all. That, however, was a young leviathan...” he said as he glanced over at the impossibly huge corpse lying on the ground. The rest of us took a moment to stare at it as well. “Does that look young to you?”
“Not even remotely,” Bram said.
Yeah, no kidding.
“Assuming my inferences are correct... Hrrah!” Elrand exclaimed as he swung his dragon sword at the leviathan’s side.
Piiing!
He swung again. “Hiyah!”
Ka-shiiing!
And again. “Hah!”
Diiing!