Chapter Three Hundred and Twenty-Seven: Adventurer and Alchemist
“We came to have you make some potions for us, Sis.”
With that, Thor and his party dumped a great pile of every manner of material they had brought with them. In the room that Karen already occupied as a matter of course within the Ehlertt family’s manor, Karen received the visit of Thor and his Crimson Thunder party.
“Even though we’re trying to set the fastest record, the fortieth floor is a different beast—we need to prepare differently than we have before. That’s what we’re doing right now.”
“A-Amazing… These are unbelievably expensive! …Wait, I’ve seen this one in a textbook!”
“We brought everything that looked like it might be useful for alchemy. Everything we’ve gathered across all sorts of dungeons up to now. I don’t know much about alchemy, but the materials from when we conquered the capital dungeon’s thirtieth floor are probably rarer, so I separated those.”
Karen stood stunned before the materials Thor’s party had brought.
“…These are all things you couldn’t buy even with money. I don’t have the knowledge or the skill to work with them yet.”
Yuluyana had taught her several potions, but they were all within the range of materials Karen could obtain herself. What Thor had brought were things accumulated over the course of their adventures. Materials obtainable between the twenty-first and thirtieth floors of a dungeon, in particular, were extraordinarily expensive—the kind that were nearly impossible to get no matter how much money one offered.
Because so few people could even descend that far.
“I know. That’s why we’ve already commissioned other alchemists to make the ordinary potions that can be brewed from materials like these—the ones we think we’ll need.”
“Ordinary…? I mean, take this dryad flower nectar, for instance—potions made with something like this are the kind you’d normally commission from an A-rank or S-rank alchemist.”
Karen handled the bottled rare materials with their appraisal results attached, touching them with great care. Thor shrugged.
“They drop sometimes when you kill monsters. It’s not that unusual.”
“So that’s your definition of ordinary…”
“Honestly, no matter how expensive those kinds of potions are, we can get them.”
“That’s exactly what I’d expect from high-ranking adventurers.”
“But your potions, Sis? No amount of money can buy those anywhere else.”
It was true—if asked whether potions like Karen’s would ever drop in a dungeon, she had a feeling the answer was absolutely not. Perhaps somewhere in the world they might, but even S-rank alchemist Yuluyana had regarded Karen’s potions with curiosity. Which meant they were at least that rare.
“So—we’re counting on you, Sis!”
Thor turned to leave without another word, but Karen hurriedly stopped him.
“Wait. I don’t have nearly enough information to go on!”
“You know about the royal capital dungeon, don’t you, Sis?”
“I know what anyone living in the capital would know. But nowhere near as much as you.”
Cutting off Thor’s unquestioning confidence in her, Karen continued:
“I’ve heard stories about the thirty-first through fortieth floors. Hardly anyone has ever reached them, so I know as much as any ordinary adventurer—no more than that.”
“Got it. So that’s the extent of your knowledge, Sis.”
“If I recall correctly, from the thirty-first floor of the capital dungeon, you’re climbing a snowy mountain—I’ve heard that much. And then at some floor you enter a cave, and once you’re through the cave, that’s the fortieth floor, the Fairy Realm?”
Urashima Taro, lost at sea, ended up in the Dragon Palace; adventurers who disappeared in dungeons were said to end up in the Fairy Realm. The idea that they never came back because it was a land of eternal youth, because life there was too joyful to remember the passage of time—both stories had that in common.
Which was to say, to ordinary people, the Fairy Realm on the fortieth floor was very much the stuff of fairy tales. Thor nodded.
“That’s roughly it, yeah.”
“There must be information that only A-rank adventurers like you are allowed to access. And from that information, there are definitely specific potions you need. I’m not sure how much of it I’m allowed to hear—but tell me as much as you can.”
“I keep a record of the characteristics of each floor in a notebook. I’ll pass it along to you later, Ms. Karen.”
“That’s our Chris! Always so meticulous.”
Besides calling himself the errand-runner, Chris apparently also handled the party’s clerical work. Judging by appearances alone, Chris looked more like the leader than Thor, yet somehow the two worked together perfectly.
“Is this information I’m allowed to know?”
“As long as we’ve judged that it’s safe to disclose on our own responsibility, there’s no problem.”
“If there’s a leak, the people who gave us the information will hold us accountable.”
“This is classified material!”
Karen shuddered at Wanda’s words, and Thor said lightly:
“It’s not like it’s that serious—it’s information about things we’re about to witness firsthand anyway. Even if you did happen to leak it, if you said it came from us and we don’t raise an issue over it, you won’t be guilty of anything.”
“Is that really how it works…?”
“It is, Ms. Karen. Who on earth is going to stop us A-rank adventurers from telling the story of our own heroics? If you got charged with a crime every time you tried to talk to a girl, that’d be exhausting, wouldn’t it?”
“Do learn to distinguish between what’s alright to share and what isn’t, Luis.”
Odo gave Luis a flat look as he said it.
“Remember when you fell for a honey trap and leaked information? Another party got there ahead of us. That was the absolute worst, wasn’t it?”
“Come on! Did you have to say that in front of Karen?”
Karen looked around at the lively group and smiled.
“I probably don’t understand what it is you truly need. So… tell me everything. I want to make potions suited to every one of you in the Crimson Thunder.”
Thor’s eyes went wide at Karen’s question. After a moment, he said:
“…Other alchemists have never asked us anything like that before.”
“Oh—sorry! I’m still a rapidly growing alchemist…! I don’t yet have the skill to create precisely the right potions without asking…!”
“That’s not what I meant, Sis.”
Thor stopped Karen calmly as she began to spiral.
“I’m an adventurer, so I might actually know more than you about what potions are useful in the field. That’s why I just order whatever I need. Nobody else offers to come up with new potions tailored to what we actually want the way you do, Sis… But you can.”
Thor finished his expression of admiration, then bowed his head low.
“Thank you, Sis.”
When he raised his face, his eyes were serious.
“Alchemist Karen… I want you to hear everything about our adventures.”
Karen nodded and carefully listened as Thor and his companions recounted their experiences. And as she listened, she realized something. Thor had been leaving a great deal out of his adventure stories up until now.
Most likely to keep her from worrying. He had only ever shared the clean, interesting, fun parts of adventuring. She had vaguely sensed as much, but hearing it all properly brought out one episode after another of the kind that would have made her want to say something as his older sister.
But Karen said nothing and kept listening. Because Adventurer Thor, requesting potions from Alchemist Karen for his challenge of the fortieth floor, had held nothing back—and so Alchemist Karen, quietly turning over in her mind what potions she might make for her client, listened on in silence.
“Hey.”
As they left the Ehlertt family’s manor, Thor spoke to no one in particular.
“I thought getting Sis as our sponsor would at least help give her potions some credibility… but maybe we’re the ones who ended up with an incredible sponsor.”
“You’re only realizing this now, Leader?”
Wanda looked at him with exasperation.
“What? Are you saying you all already knew?!”
“Well… the panacea, come on. Even I’d hesitate to try flirting with someone like that.”
“When someone is family, you stop seeing them objectively. I can understand why it’s hard for you to notice just how extraordinary she really is.”
“The two of you are both so far beyond normal that you’ve lost all sense of what ‘ordinary’ even means. Ha ha ha…”
Watching Chris’s strained smile, Thor’s face went red by degrees, and he buried his head in his hands.
“I went and asked Sis to be our sponsor and called it an engagement present!”
“A-rank adventurers are impressive enough in their own right, so it’s fine. Probably.”
Wanda offered him a rather half-hearted attempt at comfort. Even as his expression cycled through every emotion imaginable, Thor kept moving forward with the next stage of preparations for the adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment