Prologue: Peak Racing
“As long as I’m working on the clothes for the filolials, while I’m at it, I’ll make something for Keel as well,” I declared. “Father, can you tell me Keel’s size later?”
“Huh?” Father glanced at me. “While you’re at it? You make it sound like Keel is an afterthought.”
Father and I were in the midst of our peddling preparations with Keel. I really didn’t know anything about sizes, but I knew there would be no problem if I left it to Father’s judgment.
“And as for the style . . . how about a goth maid sort of look to help in the peddling?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Oink oink!?”
“Didn’t we talk about this before?” Father asked. “You’re going to be our salesman, peddling from a cart.”
“Oink oink oink!”
Keel shook her head like she didn’t approve.
“It’ll be fine,” Father said. “I know you’re not the shy type. It’ll be an easy job for you. And if you have any trouble, just let me know and I’ll teach you the ropes, so don’t worry about it.”
“Oink oink.”
Keel gave a slow, reluctant nod.
“Motoyasu, you’ll have to buy fabrics somewhere, won’t you?”
“I need a special type of material to make clothes for the filolials, I say!”
“What kind?”
“I use a special fabric that can expand or shrink when they transform!”
“So there are magical fabrics here,” Father said. “Do you know how to make clothes like that?”
“Of course,” I declared. “It’s used for therianthropes’ clothes for when they transform. You need to apply their magical power to a thread, and then once you make fabric out of that thread, you can create special clothes out of it!”
“It sounds expensive.”
“Not anything that I can’t handle.”
I could easily take care of it if I went to Siltvelt. I knew the perfect place over there. That night, I planned to take the filolials with me to that place and have them spin some special thread for me.
“Keel, do you want the same kind of special clothes?” Father asked.
“Oink oink!”
Keel was shaking her head back and forth, like she strongly disapproved.
I wondered if it was because she was still growing, afraid that it would be annoying if her size changed, since the clothes could only change when the wearer transforms, not if they grow in the normal sense. Now that I thought about it, once filolials reach a fixed size, they stop growing. So there would never be a situation in which their old clothes got too small.
“It’s because Keel is still growing,” I informed Father. “So I’ll just make some clothes for Keel out of normal fabric this time around.”
“Fine with me. I’ll let you take care of it,” Father said.
“Leave it to me, I say!”
After all, I’d made perfect clothes for Yuki and the other filolials countless times before. With all of my practice, making the goth maid outfit for Keel would be no problem at all.
So after Father told me Keel’s size, I went to a Melromarc dressmaker and bought some fabric. Then we started off to the Melromarc castle town to get a place to stay!
I climbed on Yuki’s back. Kou was waiting behind us. Father and Keel were riding on Sakura’s back.
“Okay, see you later,” Father said.
“Until next time!” I cried.
Since the Siltvelt emissary had promised to get us a peddling license within a few days, until then I figured it was up to me to take care of getting the carts for us to use. A carriage that a filolial could pull would be just what we needed.
I calculated that we needed to use our peddling to buy ourselves at least two months of time for training.
The filolials were plenty strong, so I could get us a sturdy carriage that could haul a heavy load.
And yet, I also believed in the importance of comfort, especially in a carriage. I needed something that would help Father and Keel get used to life in a carriage. And that meant that a normal carriage was the way to go!
A normal carriage would also conceal our true strength, so if it helped us hunt a few more bandits along the way, all the better, I say!
While I pondered such important matters, Yuki quickly went ahead, ignoring the monsters along the way and resisting her hunger.
I quickly got a room at an inn and then made clothes for Keel in the stables with Yuki and Kou.
“Kweh?” Yuki and Kou were playfully poking at the torn ends of the unused fabric with their beaks in amusement. What a magnificent scene!
“Well, almost time to go,” I declared.
I turned to Yuki and Kou as they continued to play and spoke to them.
“Filolials, transform into your angel form!”
Emitting a pale light from their feathers, Yuki and Kou changed into their angel forms. They looked the same as they had in the previous go-arounds. Yuki was silvery and white-haired. She just oozed refinement! Kou had yellow hair and a mischievous expression.
“Are we going to play a game, Motoyasu?” Yuki asked.
“A game! Let’s play!” shouted Kou.
“Let’s see. Well, first things first, can you put on these pajamas for the time being?”
“At once!”
“Yeah!”
“When you transform, they’ll tear apart, so be careful.”
It was still the middle of the day, but it would be smart to pretend like we were staying overnight at the inn. That way, I could take Yuki and Kou in the portal to Siltvelt with me.
“So what game should we play?” I asked them.
“Hmm . . . I wanna ride on your shoulders!” Kou exclaimed.
“Go right ahead.”
“Hey, only Kou? That’s no fair,” Yuki said.
“You’re up next, Yuki,” I promised.
So I hung out with Yuki and Kou until night fell. By that time they had reverted back to their normal form, so I paid the innkeeper for a room and brought Yuki and Kou up with me. It was more expensive than just using the stables, but I wanted to make sure that no one found out that they had left.
“You understand what we’re doing, right?” I asked them.
“It’s as clear as day,” said Yuki.
“Yeah!” said Kou.
So Yuki and Kou pretended to sleep, and I prepared to activate the portal skill like I had done before. I suppose they already knew the deal because we had done it several times in the past. We had to get stronger without the evil Church of the Three Heroes knowing what we were up to, I say!
So we all got into bed and pretended to be sound asleep. Then we slowly, stealthily slipped out of bed.
Kou was snoring loudly.
“Kou, come on now. You’re not actually supposed to sleep!” Yuki shook Kou in exasperation.
Once we had pretended like we were asleep in bed, I activated the portal skill and sent us flying off to Siltvelt.
Suddenly, the world around us changed to the Siltvelt castle town. Siltvelt was a country of demi-humans, and no small number of them were nocturnal. So there were plenty of stores open late at night, unlike Melromarc. Some stores, of course, were only open in the day, but not nearly as many as in Melromarc.
I looked around the castle town for a good clothing store and went into a place that was able to turn magic into thread.
“I would like you to turn these filolials’ magical power into thread for me,” I declared to the storekeeper.
“If you please!” chimed in Yuki.
“Appreciated!” chirped Kou.
“Uh, umm . . .” The storekeeper looked puzzled to see a human alongside two filolials, but once he saw how lively Yuki and Kou were, he agreed. When Yuki and Kou transformed with a poof, the storekeeper gasped. Well, there didn’t seem to be any problem to me! And it turned out that you could get magical thread for cheap at a genuine store like that. So now I just had to turn the thread into fabric.
I couldn’t do it like Father could, but I had a thought: should we go ahead and find a trader to get some provisions and carriages?
No—for now, Yuki and Kou’s clothes had to take priority. I’d get that thread turned into fabric as soon as I could! It wasn’t that it took a particularly long time to do, but if I made the clothes themselves on top of getting the fabric, it would already be morning by the time I finished. Whatever! I would have plenty of time to finish. We’d have to figure out a plan for later while we were doing our peddling, so I’d be able to finish making the clothes then.