We finished stripping away the outlaws’ weapons and equipment, removed their Spheres, then tied them up. Now we were able to get back to the main mission. We’d come here to return a certain carbuncle.
“Mi...foo...!”
The black carbuncle was all tuckered out from its attack, so it was spread out on the ground as if it wanted us to leave it be. I wanted to smack the cheeky thing, but then the dryads started to yammer once again to Leen.
“Found them!” “Brought them!” “Praise!”
The dryads were jumping about, and in the next second, a chorus of squeaks erupted.
“Myuu!” “Myu?” “Mimimimi!” “Mi, foo, mifoo!” “Mii mii!” “Miifoo!” “Myum, myum...” “Mi...!”
A whole group of carbuncles suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
“Whuh?!”
The outlaws’ attack had put me on high alert, but I hadn’t detected the carbuncles’ presence until they suddenly appeared. It was as if they’d just popped into existence.
“W-Wow, there are so many of them!” Tiesel said. Even though he had been living with one for the past year, he seemed surprised.
There were white ones, light-blue ones, yellow ones, red ones—all of them had different colored fur, with no two alike.
“They’re...thinner than I imagined,” Tiesel said.
Yeah. If I were to choose my words, they were pretty slender creatures. I’d thought that Tiesel’s carbuncle had slimmed down a lot after firing off that lightray, but it was still chunkier than the others. Apparently it hadn’t burned off all of its fat just yet.
“Mi, miiii!” Tiesel’s carbuncle squeaked.
The horde of carbuncles surrounded Tiesel’s black carbuncle and began a fluffy pawed beatdown.
“Myu myu myu myu myu mii!” they chorused.
“Mi... Miifoo?!” Tiesel’s carbuncle replied.
I didn’t need Leen to interpret this for me. The group were asking where this one had gone and Tiesel’s carbuncle was apologizing. Or something like that. Probably.
“Mi... Foooon...”
While the carbuncles all ganged up on Tiesel’s one, another carbuncle spoke up as it padded to the group with heavy, fluffy pawsteps. This carbuncle was three times bigger than the rest and was covered in perfectly white fur. It was bigger than the black carbuncle in a different sense and had thick, fluffy fur that covered its eyes. My impression was that this was the elder.
“The elder!” Leen said.
“So I was right, huh.”
“Mii... Foo? Mifoo?” the elder said, cocking his head as he looked up at Leen.
“Myu. Miiimyumi, miimi,” Leen replied, pointing at Tiesel and the black carbuncle. She was probably giving the explanation.
“Mifooooo...”
The elder carbuncle thudded over to Tiesel’s carbuncle.
“Myu...?” the black carbuncle said, lifting up its head with trepidation.
“Myuuuuun!” the elder shouted before performing a full body tackle.
“Myuu?!” the black carbuncle said. It crashed to the ground and did three rolls before it bonked into a tree. It came to a halt, all of its limbs splayed out.
After that, the elder turned toward us and bowed his head. He said, “Myuuumyu... Mifoon...” Was he apologizing...?
“Myu myu,” Leen replied. (“Don’t worry!”, apparently.)
“Myu...” the black carbuncle murmured. It tottered over and stood in front of Tiesel. It raised its forepaws up to him and said, “Myumyumii myumi!”
“Yeah. Thank you too,” Tiesel said.
They’d lived together for a whole year. I imagined that they could just about work out what the other wished to say. The carbuncle was probably saying goodbye. The other carbuncles squeaked and one by one, the gemstones on their foreheads started to glow.
“Whoa!”
The light enveloped them, and in the next instant, they began to disappear, one after the other, including the elder, as if they’d never been here. With a chorus of squeaking, they all vanished, until finally the black carbuncle did too with one last “mimyuu!”
The woods had been so lively, but they fell into silence once more as if none of this had happened.
“Hey, Leen? Can carbuncles just vanish and appear outta nowhere...?” I asked.
“Yes, when moving, they use special ‘paths’ that fairies and spirits use which humans can’t detect. They escape through them the second they sense danger, making them tricky to find.”
“Right... I see.”
“If you try to chase one, they’ll run away or use their lightray, so you need to be careful.”
“Yeah, I learned that today.”
I accepted what Leen had said, but I didn’t fully understand it. All I could do was nod along. Anyway, our quest was over. We just needed to drag these outlaws home.
“I’m glad we returned him back safely. If I’d come here alone, I probably would have died,” Tiesel said, turning to face us. “I owe you both my life. Thank you.”
“I was just doing my job,” I said.
“C’mon, Hakura, you don’t need to be so moody! Just accept his thanks!” Leen said.
I looked down at my feet and saw a whole pile of glittering Carbuncle Stones. Not just the ones of the same color that had flooded Esma—there were red, blue, purple, and more stones from the whole diverse range of carbuncles that had just been here. If we took them home, we’d earn enough to build a house on the spot.
“Wow!” “So many!” “Yay!”
The dryads had come close and were enjoying the gemstones with excitement. The treant which had captured the spear-wielder also reached out a branch to pick up a stone and throw it into one of its notches. Even a monster as big as it wasn’t hoarding all the Carbuncle Stones for itself and was choosing which it would like.
“A snack for monsters, huh...” I muttered.
It was people who had decided to give these things value and sell them for money, and they had been led astray by their artificial worth. As this thought came to mind, everything started to feel so stupid.
“So how about it? Shall we take one home too?” Leen asked, popping her head in front of me, as if she had read my thoughts.
“Nah. I’m sick of gemstones,” I said with complete honesty, before we began the journey back.
△
Hallabey Salwarlay was the name he gave, but this was not his real home name.
Salwarlay was the name of the largest business city in the world, and Hallabey believed that flaunting that he had once called the place his home would improve his chances as a tradesman. In truth, he was born in a small, impoverished village located in a rural part of Corsueny that only locals would have heard of. Perhaps that was why he ended up latching onto the dream of becoming a merchant and making it big. He would wear luxurious clothes, wear the finest jewelry, live in a splendid manor, have a beautiful wife, and achieve everything he wanted through his own grit.
One may view these aspirations as shallow, but it was a fact of life that the world ran on money alone.
When Hallabey found out about this infinite supply of Carbuncle Stones, he thought he found the gateway to unlock all of his desires. That has-been-noble brat had warned him that selling the entire stock at once would result in a devaluation of the product, but the kid didn’t know that you needed funds to start a business! He didn’t know the first thing about economics. He was an amateur who shouldn’t stick his neck where it didn’t belong, and he should know that he owed Hallabey everything, especially for saving him and his sister. Hallabey had initially wondered what point there was in saving some stupid blue-blooded kids who didn’t have any ennies to their name, but he later realized that his master must have foreseen the future windfall when he told him to help out.
All the same, Hallabey viewed his master as a fool too.
“You’ll never be an honest merchant!” his master had stated before kicking him out. Hallabey assumed that his master had done this out of fear of the potential of his trading. After all, those brats had asked Hallabey for help. A successful merchant needed good connections and even better luck. He had wanted to become a bigshot, so he had taken on debt to purchase land, a store, selling rights, and nice clothes to help with negotiations. That was why he had sold as much as he could. And where was the harm? He had the stock, so getting rich off of it was better than letting them get dusty.
As time passed, they stopped selling, and the pile of inventory only grew. Hallabey had made his investments with the assumption that he would sell through all of his stock, so he’d never really worried about this possibility. After all, he had quickly worked out what he needed to do: if they weren’t selling in Esma, then all he needed to do was find pastures new.
The problem was the damned guild.
When one sold Carbuncle Stones, the rule was that you needed to go to the guild to have them appraised and get proof that they were genuine items. Those busybodies wanted to know who and where they were sourced from, what routes they had taken. They were incorrigible. How the hell was he meant to do business this way?
Hallabey didn’t like adventurers. They were constantly broke yet thought they were better than everybody else. To top it off, they had the gall to quibble with him during sales! They should just pay the damn price and leave—why the hell were they whining about minor problems like his products being “defective,” his information being incorrect, or him “swindling” them?! Who cared what the difference between bronze and iron was? As long as the sword was hard, why did that matter?
Another problem was that Tiesel was the one supplying the Carbuncle Stones. Hallabey regretted not stealing the damn carbuncle and hiring a wizard to feed it the mana it needed to keep producing Carbuncle Stones. He should’ve been more careful and kept everything under his own watch. Why hadn’t he realized this earlier? While he had been annoyed at how much it would’ve cost to secretly hire some outlaws to do his dirty work, that wouldn’t have mattered once he got his hands on the carbuncle. At the end of the day, he would finally have his golden goose in the palm of his hand.
Speak of the devil, Hallabey thought as he heard a knock at the door. He’d paid those outlaws a handsome sum, yet they’d sure taken their sweet time. He didn’t mind, though. If things went as well as he envisioned them going, then there was no harm in being generous on this one occasion. He might be working with them for some time.
Hallabey opened the door with a smile—he needed to show his best face when doing business, after all. As the expensive double doors gave way, the beautiful evening light shone in, as if reflecting the glittering future that lay ahead of him...