“Nice catch! With reflexes like that, I’m sure you’ll turn out to be a fine adventurer!”
“Um...thanks?”
The man erupted into laughter once more. “Well, I’ve had enough embarrassment for today, so see ya later! Ha ha ha!” He walked back over to the bar, where his two companions immediately began razzing him:
“Damn, dude, she turned you down hard!”
“For someone who didn’t have a hope in hell, you sure tried to show off—and how lame! What was that ‘here’s some money as an apology’?”
“Oh, shut up. She’s a newbie, so I wanted to help her out.”
“Huh...I thought he was trying to cause trouble, but maybe he’s a kinder person than I thought,” I murmured.
“Erm...yes. Mr. Blade is a kind person at heart. He often looks after the less experienced adventurers.”
“His name’s Blade? Okay, I’ll remember that.”
And that was how I earned my first bit of money in this new world—tossed to me by a drunk busybody of a senior adventurer.
Pinching my newly acquired coin between my finger and thumb, I examined it closely. If I could buy five loaves of rye bread with this, it’d roughly come out to five hundred yen in Japanese currency. Not bad. Plus, I could copy the coin as many times as I wanted using spatial magic. In other words, now that I had one coin, I could instantly become rich.
“...”
Except it didn’t seem right to do that. It somehow felt wrong. After all, it’d be like printing counterfeit money. Well, apparently spatial magic made perfect copies down to the molecule, so it technically would still be legal tender, but money was money. Maybe it was nothing more than pocket change at the moment, but if I was aiming to be a merchant in the future, I would need to be more careful. As I earned more money dealing with other merchants, I’d juice the market with money that wasn’t supposed to exist and cause prices to skyrocket. Inflation would cause the entire market to crumble, and it’d all be because I duplicated a single copper coin.
Also, the more I duplicated coins, the less resistance I’d have to the idea. If I’m going to copy anything, it should be the goods themselves... No, that wouldn’t be smart. Merchants sell things other people make and collect. If I sold them and I was the only one to profit, I’d be bypassing the normal monetary exchange, and that wouldn’t be healthy for the economy either.
“Then I won’t use magic to copy money or goods, unless there’s absolutely no other option.”
With the power of spatial magic, there should be plenty of other ways to make money. I’ll be giving myself a handicap, but maybe the challenge will make it more fun, right? Yeah! With that decided, I stored the coin in my space of holding for now.
Incidentally, following that logic, copying goods I made from scratch would be A-okay. In fact, it’d be a plus—not having to make each one would save me a ton of time! On top of that, the Goddess has granted me the foundation to learn other skills as well. I could even go down the path of smithing, alchemy, or magecraft if I feel like it! Items for my personal use would also be fine to copy, as long as I don’t sell them. For instance, if I wanted to make myself a sword out of a rare metal, I could just copy one piece of metal and save myself the trouble of having to find the rest. I could also copy as much material as I needed for practicing crafting. But I can’t sell any of these—they’re for me only! I have to keep that in mind!
“Of course, if I make too many rules, that’d be boring in itself... Oh, whoa.”
Suddenly, I was overcome with an intense urge to pee. My first urge to pee in this new world. Luckily, I was already inside the Adventurer’s Guild, which was a relief. I’d rather not have my first bathroom experience as a girl be out in the wilderness.
“Excuse me, where’s the bathroom?” I asked the receptionist.
“Oh yes, it’s right over there.”
“Thanks.”
Oh, shit, I’m leaking...I guess becoming conscious of needing to pee made it worse. Come to think of it, how do girls even hold it in without a...you know? Not good... I need to get to the toilet right now!
I threw the door open in a panic. Several guys were already peeing in toilets resembling urinals. Ugh...the room reeked of piss. The stench of ammonia was even more intense than in Shinjuku Station. Maybe inventing flush toilets should actually be my priority in this world.
“Whoa, miss! This is the guys’ bathroom, you know!”
Shit, that’s right—I’m a girl now. Karina, you ditz!
“Too late now! I’m gonna leak! Lemme use a stall!”
“Wha? Well, I guess if peeing yourself’s the alternative, fine. Just watch out for the slime.”
I flew into the largest stall, and commenced my inaugural tinkle in a new world. Whew... Wait, there’s no TP?!
Man, that feels better, though. Good thing I managed to get one of the sit-down stalls. Let’s see...according to the Tome of General Knowledge, toilet paper isn’t a thing here. People use “cleansing” spells instead, apparently. Well, I guess that means you don’t have to worry about running out of TP, just MP! Also, there really was a slime creature at the bottom! And it was really angry to see me too—apparently Mr. Slime here was called a “scavenger slime,” and men and women had separate versions they were supposed to use. As for why, the tome didn’t say...maybe it was just a matter of preference. Looks like bathroom etiquette here runs deeper than I thought...or perhaps I should say, the work of a slime runs deep. Literally.