Then Father raised his head and spoke up. “How much for a filolial?”
“For an adult, 200 silver coins at minimum. Their plumage has all sorts of uses. Yes sir.”
“So if that’s the price for an adult, a chick must be cheaper. And even more so for an egg. So raising filolials must be extremely expensive. Am I right?”
“Not at all,” the monster trainer said. “The eggs go for the same price.”
“So it’s a random lottery, like you said,” Father said, nodding. “How much for a flying dragon?”
“On the current market, a flying dragon is 20 gold coins.”
“What are the chances of drawing one in the raffle?”
“We currently have 250 eggs in the raffle,” the monster trainer said. “Among them is a single flying dragon egg.”
Father frowned and paused to think.
A 1-in-250 chance. Pretty tough.
Still, it’s not like we needed a dragon or anything.
“You can’t tell what kind of monsters are in each egg by the appearance or weight either. Be sure to buy with the expectation that it really is a 1-in-250 chance.”
“You’re a smart merchant,” Father said.
“I’ll be sure to publicize the name of the winner and use them in advertising as well,” the monster trainer said with a grin.
Father scratched his chin. “Still, the chance is just so low . . .”
“If you buy ten, you’ll almost definitely be giving yourself a fair shot and can choose from these lottery tickets,” the monster trainer said, gesturing. “Yes sir.”
“It’s like a game where you focus on buying stuff,” Father muttered to himself. “Is there really a knight’s dragon in there?”
“There is. In fact, every egg in there has a value of at least 300 silver coins.”
Father sighed, slumping his shoulders. He mumbled to himself about how it was like a capsule toy or something.
“Hmmmm . . .”
Father glanced over at me.
“Motoyasu,” he said, beckoning to me.
“What is it, Father?”
“You might not have heard it from me before, but I’m pretty sure that in the first go-around, I bought an egg lottery ticket here. Which means that I likely ended up with Filo-tan in the lottery.”
“How do you know?”
Would it really be possible to draw Filo-tan’s egg out of a random lottery? I didn’t understand in the slightest.
“Even if we don’t end up with her, we can always make an exchange with the monster trainer. I must’ve been thinking that even if I got a useless monster, I could always train it and sell it back here. Just like how the monster trainer told me about how Keel’s price had gone way up this time, he must’ve said something similar to me in the first go-around about another one of my slaves.”
And after a moment’s pause, Father pointed at one of the lottery tickets.
“And it would be hard on my other slaves if I buy a new one when they’re standing right there. So I must’ve decided that a monster I could train would be the best move.”
Hmm. So Father was saying that there was a high probability that he won Filo-tan in the lottery, it seemed.
When I bought up all the non-lottery eggs from the monster trainer the last time around, Filo-tan’s egg must have been among the lottery eggs, which would explain why I didn’t end up with Filo-tan then. But why didn’t the monster trainer tell me about the lottery in the last go-around? Had my timing been off?
For example, could someone else have played the lottery and gotten Filo-tan just before I had arrived?
“Then how about this?” Father said. “We’ll pay 200 silver coins rather than 100, and you remove all of the other eggs besides filolial and dragon eggs from the lottery.”
The monster trainer shook his head. “Even for the heroes, that I cannot do, yes sir.”
“Then let’s strike a deal.”
“Which is?”
Father leaned over and whispered in the monster trainer’s ear. Then he pointed at Sakura.
“Sakura, turn into your filolial form!”
Sakura looked around. “Right now? I don’t really wanna here . . . But just because you asked me to, Naofumi, I’ll do it.”
With a poof, Sakura transformed into her filolial queen form.
The monster trainer widened his eyes in amazement.
“What in the world . . . I do remember thinking that you had a strange companion the last time that you visited here, but I didn’t realize that she could do this!”
“So?” Father asked. “How about it? Take out everything besides the filolial and dragon eggs? No matter what we get, we’ll come back here to show you how it develops. Is that sort of information valuable enough to you?”
The monster trainer thought about it for a while and then nodded.
“Understood. I’ll take out all of the other eggs. Yes sir!”
“Okay, Sakura, you can switch back.”
“Got it!”
Sakura turned back into her angel form.
As always, Father had come up with the perfect strategy. Since he didn’t have the money, he offered information instead. I would have never come up with something like that on my own.
The monster trainer took out many of the eggs from the lottery crate.
“Now then, here is a lottery with only filolial and dragon eggs. Yes sir.”
The once-full crate of eggs was full of holes. Father looked at the pile and beckoned me over. He was trying to figure out if Filo-tan was among the eggs, no doubt. But I couldn’t remember exactly what she smelled like as an egg.
I could tell there were all sorts of strong smells mixed together in the crate. But as I learned in the previous go-around, this mix of smells alone wouldn’t guarantee that Filo-tan was among the eggs. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do about it.
I eliminated some of the eggs that were obviously not Filo-tan, leaving a few remaining. I pointed at the ones I was considering, and after Father thought about it for some time, he pointed at an egg.
We’re not buying all of them?
I glanced over at Father in surprise, but he shook his head and whispered that it could cause problems for us if we got too many. I supposed he meant that we would stand out too much.
There was also the problem: filolials’ enormous appetite. While they could acquire their own food, that would end up impacting the local ecology, which Father in the first go-around had also been highly concerned about. With the bioplants, we eventually managed to put that problem behind us, but we didn’t have the same agricultural system in place yet.
Very well. I’d yield to Father’s decision.
“I’ll take this one,” Father said to the monster trainer. “But this one and this one . . . and the ones over here, I want you to save them for me. I’ll buy them later.”
“Of course. Yes sir.”
Once again, the perfect plan! I have never seen Father err, I say, not ever!
Certainly, things will turn out differently from the last time, where I simply bought every last filolial and still Filo-tan wasn’t among them. Since the monster trainer was keeping some of the eggs on hold for us, we also reduced the chances that someone else could buy Filo-tan and snatch her away, in case the first egg wasn’t Filo-tan.
“Since I see that you already have some filolials in your possession, I assume that you are already aware of the registration process, yes sir.”
Father placed the egg in the monster trainer’s incubator.
“If it doesn’t hatch properly, I’ll consider it a breach of contract and come for a remuneration,” Father said.
“I tip my hat to you, heroes!” the monster trainer said. “You never miss a beat when it comes to negotiating.”
Father definitely impressed the monster trainer. It was a completely different atmosphere compared to when I came last time.
But I could tell that Father was reaching his limit for playing along with the monster trainer. His tone had started to sound strange.
“I take verbal promises seriously,” Father said. “If you play dumb, the Spear Hero is my slave, and he’ll do whatever I tell him to do to you.”
“The Spear Hero is your slave? Surely heroes can’t become slaves!”
“Hmph. Well, there’s no binding magic on him. But he does whatever I tell him to. Right, Motoyasu?”
“That is 100% true,” I proclaimed. “If Father so commands it, I will see it through, no matter what!”
If Father so commanded, I, Motoyasu Kitamura, after stealing every last one of the monster trainer’s filolial eggs, would happily burn this tent to the ground, I say!
“Amazing! You are even better than I thought you were, Shield Hero. You even took another hero as a slave! Yes sir!”
Father paid the monster trainer the 200 silver coins. And now we had another filolial egg in our possession.
Father let out a long sigh after we left the tent. “Man, that’s always rough. I can talk on his level, but I don’t like the guy in the least.”
“You really made him like you, Big Bro,” Keel commented.
“He’s not difficult to play, but the longer I have to do it, the more I get scared about getting pulled into his world.”
“It is remarkable,” I said. “He was cold and reserved to me in the last go-around.”
Father shrugged and nodded knowingly. “Well, you’re you, Motoyasu.”
What exactly did he mean by that?
“He was nice to you, but he totally gives me the creeps!” Keel said.
“I feel the same,” Father said.
“I hate it in there,” Sakura said.
Nevertheless, just as Father had told me in the first go-around, there was no doubt that it was an amazing store. There were other good places to acquire filolials, but still . . .
“Now that you mention it, he’s pretty different from the other nasty merchants. He’s got his own kinda weird atmosphere,” Keel said.
“What do you mean?” said Father.
In Melromarc, there is a custom of enslaving demi-humans. In the first go-around, I visited other monster trainers as well, besides just the one that we just went to. If I had to put my finger on it, there was a clear difference in how this monster trainer and the rest of them treated their slaves.
“Before you bought me, there were even times when I got whipped by other demi-humans!” Keel snarled. “I don’t know if they wanted to keep me or I just didn’t sell, but they were laughing and smiling when they hit me!”
“That’s awful . . .”
That monster trainer, while he didn’t exactly treat his slaves well, at least saw them as valuable and would never whip them. He also had a few brawny guys as his workers, as opposed to the other monster trainers, who tended to use demi-humans to do the dirty work. Perhaps he was more moderate in some ways.