In the mountain range that towered over the eastern and western sides of Talosheim, the【Capital of the Sun】, the champion Zakkart had left behind mercury mirrors that he had created using secret Alchemy techniques. The mirrors of liquid mercury reflected the sunlight towards the city, granting Talosheim the same amount of daylight hours as any place on level ground.

And so the long, thin rice that could be harvested three times a year (similar to the rice of India on Earth) was cultivated, filling the stomachs of the race that needed large amounts of food.

More than half of the country's territory was covered in Devil's Nests, but because of that, the crops grew quickly and yielded harvests three times as plentiful as crops growing in other lands.

However, during the war with the Mirg shield-nation, the fields became grasslands ruled by monsters and all of the mercury mirrors were destroyed.

Leaving that sad history aside, Vandalieu was working on making something to play with today as well.

「King, what're you making?」(Child)

Before he knew it, the Black Goblin, Anubis and Orcus children had gathered around him.

Only a few months had passed since their birth, but not a single one of them was smaller than Vandalieu now. He had heard that monsters developed at a quick pace, but seeing it with his own eyes was a shocking thing.

Hearing that the Black Goblins were actually developing slower than pure-breed Goblins was even more surprising.

「Is it a weapon?」(Braga)

「Not quite, Braga.」(Vandalieu)

Braga, one of the Black Goblin children, thought that the wooden disc-shaped object that Vandalieu was shaping with his【Golem Transmutation】might be a throwing weapon like a boomerang, but it wasn't a weapon.

「I know, it's a plate!」(Zemedo)

「Bugoh? To replace the leaves that Mom has been using recently?」(Gorba)

Zemedo, a young Anubis with the tough-looking head of a dog, and Gorba, an Orcus who was already the size of the average human adult, guessed that it might be a plate, but that was wrong as well.

「Then what is it? Tell us too!」(Memediga)

Zemedo's older twin sister... or younger twin sister? Memediga, who was his twin sister either way was curious as well.

「It's a toy」, Vandalieu told her.

『A toy?』(Children)

As his friends spoke simultaneously and turned their heads in confusion, Vandalieu adjusted the fine balance of the wooden disc. Finally satisfied with that, the last thing he did was to use what was inside a barrel that he had set aside... Rubber. He turned some of the rubber into a Rubber Golem and covered the disc in it so that it wouldn't hurt if it hit someone.

It was quite unrefined, but it was finished.

「This is a toy called a Frisbee.」(Vandalieu)

What Vandalieu had created was a Frisbee.

He had thrown sticks when playing with Bone Wolf, but he had thought it might be more interesting to use a Frisbee like people did on Earth.

In Lambda, sports and toys were underdeveloped. Every country held tournaments for athletics and combat, and there were even dolls and stuffed toys.

But there were no Frisbees or sports that involved the use of balls... Well, they might be out there somewhere if one looked hard enough.

And so Vandalieu had decided to try making one himself. Fortunately, there was more than enough wood lying around and even more fortunately, there were rubber trees, so Vandalieu made Rubber Golems from their natural rubber to use it for things like grips and cushioning material.

「This Frisbee, you throw it –」(Vandalieu)

「Hit people with it, and then you win by defeating everyone?」(Child)

「... It's a toy that you throw, catch and throw back to the person who threw it to you.」(Vandalieu)

As Vandalieu's friends seemed to have dangerous thoughts about the Frisbee, he wondered if he should have made balls first. But he generally disliked ball sports, so he didn't have much desire to make them.

Because he had been a loner at school, to him, ball sports had been nothing but「pain」inflicted onto him during physical education classes. They were nothing but a way to show off the achievements of popular people.

「For now, I'll show you the basics. Try throwing it.」(Vandalieu)

That day, Basdia thought of calling out to Vandalieu after she got back from her session of monster hunting and training, and happened to come across this scene.

「Van?」(Basdia)

Vandalieu was chasing after a small disc that was spinning through the air.

He caught the disc and then threw it back towards the children, who were standing far away from him.

「Is this some kind of training? No, he's supposed to be resting, so are they playing?」(Basdia)

Basdia thought for a moment that they were undergoing some kind of training where they were learning to catch a thrown weapon out of the air and throw it back at the enemy, but the atmosphere around them didn't seem like they were training, so she decided to stand there and observe.

After observing a little, she understood that they were playing. But from just observing, she couldn't understand what could be so fun about it.

「Here it comes, King –」(Orcus)

The Orcus boy holding the disc gave a large swing of his arm and threw it.

Because he possessed the【Superhuman Strength】skill that granted him great physical strength from birth, the disc flew high, very quickly.

「Ah, this is –」(Vandalieu)

It was impossible for Vandalieu to catch it. So Basdia thought, but Vandalieu ran at one of the nearby ruined walls and, without slowing down at all, began climbing it like a four-legged animal!

She thought that he was using magic, but it seemed that he was using his claws.

「Van looks thin but he has a lot of strength, and he's quicker than he himself thinks. As expected of the man I'm expecting to be the father of my second child.」(Basdia)

Giving a satisfied nod and thinking more positively of Vandalieu, Basdia decided that she would talk to him later and left so that she wouldn't be in their way.

And thus Frisbees became popular among the Ghouls, Black Goblins and the Anubises in particular. But its popularity was dubious among the Titans and Orcuses.

There was currently a large amount of materials that had been brought into Talosheim.

Over ninety percent of those were the products obtained by the Undead Titans who worked under Borkus to exterminate the influence of the exterior Devil's Nests from Talosheim.

There were large quantities of monster meat, timber, medicinal plants, herbs and goods of Talosheim that the Mirg shield-nation had either abandoned or never found in the first place.

Most of them were still usable... The rate at which more materials were brought in was faster than the rate at which they could be processed, so Vandalieu had simply cast【Preservation】on them and they were lying in a huge pile.

Among the quickly-gathering materials were coins that were used as the Orbaume Kingdom's currency two hundred years ago... copper and silver coins of various sizes, things that had no use now. The Mirg shield-nation had probably taken gold coins and any coins more valuable than those, but the silver coins and coins worth less than them had been abandoned.

If one were to polish these coins and take them to the Orbaume Kingdom, they could likely be used as currency except for the badly damaged ones. The currency might have been revised in the past two hundred years, but they would at least hold the value of the copper and silver that the coins were made of. If lucky, they might be worth a premium the way that old coins on Earth were valued by enthusiastic collectors.

But right now, there was really no way to use them.

「What shall we do with these?」(Vandalieu)

「There is nothing to do with them. For now, let us store them somewhere until you go to the Orbaume Kingdom, Van-sama.」(Tarea)

Tarea was getting her back rubbed by Vandalieu after having come back from changing her Job to her original Job of『Arms Smith』at the Job-changing room in the ruined Adventurers' Guild.

「Currency revisions are quite uncommon, so I believe that there should be no problem, however... I am not knowledgeable about the Orbaume Kingdom. Even if you ask Kachia and the others... Ah, there, harder...」(Tarea)

「You're right; they're enemy nations who have done nothing but wage war against each other, after all.」(Vandalieu)

Neighboring countries would normally have people going back and forth across the border, but unfortunately Viscount Balchesse's region, in which Kachia and the other former adventurers had been active in when they were still human, were not adjacent to the Orbaume Kingdom.

No, even in areas where the Mirg shield-nation and Orbaume Kingdom shared a border, almost nobody did business across them other than black-market dealers.

These two nations had been enemies ever since their foundation, and apparently many of the Orbaume Kingdom's duchies had been taken back as a result of a ghastly conflict that had occurred only a few years ago, so there was hardly an atmosphere to be doing business with each other.

But if one were to question whether the nations still functioned properly, the answer was yes. The Amid Empire covered a third of the continent... Half of the continent if one was to only consider the regions that were inhabitable by humans, and it did commercial business with nearby island nations and other continents.

Thus, the Empire had no economic problems or problems regarding the acquisition of food.

The state of the Orbaume Kingdom wasn't known, but it likely didn't suffer from any problems for the same reasons. The duchies had originally been individual small countries, and they were likely able to trade with nations outside the continent through the Kingdom.

Vandalieu had thought of taking the coins that he had taken from the bandits around Evbejia to the Orbaume Kingdom and exchange them there, but considering these facts, it would probably better if he didn't.

It felt like a waste, but it was probably best to simply melt them down into metal.

「I'll ask Craftsman Datara later.」(Vandalieu)

Datara was an Undead Titan who had been an elderly blacksmith when he was alive. He had continued swinging his hammer for two hundred years... well, swinging his hammer, but not actually making anything.

He had regained a little of his sanity and memories when he met Vandalieu, and now he was struggling to restore his workplace.

His various tools had corroded; he wouldn't be able to work unless he made them all from scratch again.

「That is a good idea. I am still unable to use metal.」(Tarea)

Tarea was a skilled arms smith with high skill levels. However, she was unskilled in the use of metal.

Arms smiths in the world of Lambda mainly use materials taken from monsters to create their weapons and armor. They do not use metal very often, unlike the swordsmiths and weapon smiths that one would imagine on Earth, who would forge metal to create swords and katanas. Even if they do, they would only use Mythril powder or Orichalcum fragments as catalysts, or use iron to make clasps for armor.

The blacksmiths who ­primarily use metals are craftsmen who create arms using copper, bronze, iron, Adamantite or Orichalcum as the base materials, with materials from monsters used only as catalysts.

The skills and tools used by the two types of craftsmen are different.

In Tarea's case in particular, she had trained her skills after becoming a Ghoul in a Devil's Nest forest, where metal had been scarce. The last time she had used metal in her work was over two hundred years ago.

「If I had the tools, as long as I am not needed to create something, I think that I would be able to at least melt down coins, you know? But if there is a specialist around, it is best to leave it to him.」(Tarea)

「You're right. And Datara would probably be angry if I didn't ask him to do it.」(Vandalieu)

Datara was a moody old man. If he were to discover that Vandalieu had given this task to Tarea, who was unskilled in the handling of metal, he would get very angry indeed. And since he was now an Undead, whose emotions often went out of control, there was a chance that this anger would be permanent.

And moody old men in general seemed like they would be scary if they got angry.

「Still, how shameful of me. To become overenthusiastic and... nnh... cause pain to my back.」(Tarea)

The friendly, two-hundred-and-sixty-four-year-old Tarea who looked like a friendly person in her teenage years had been rendered helpless by a back injury.

Because the Job-changing room in the Adventurers' Guild was usable, all of the Ghouls, including Tarea, had acquired Jobs.

Jobs were blessings granted to people by the gods even before the appearance of the Demon King. Obviously, monsters couldn't undergo Job changes. That applied even for Sam and Nuaza, who had been people before becoming Undead.

However, Ghouls were one of the races that Vida had given birth to alongside the Vampires. They were half-monster, but as the other part counted as human, they could undergo Job-changes.

This was certainly the case considering that Tarea and Kachia had retained the bonuses to their Attribute Values and skills of the Jobs they had possessed as humans, even after becoming Ghouls.

And so the Ghouls who had lived in a Devil's Nest up until now, unable to use a city's Job-changing room or make one of their own, had used the Job-changing room available to them in Talosheim.

Thus, Tarea was able to change from the Job that she had been forced into when she was sold by her family and had long since reached level 100 in, the『Prostitute』job, to her original Job of『Arms Smith.』

「Now I can become a『Renowned Craftsman』and『Artisan』that I had dreamed of being as a human!」(Tarea)

She had been very happy.『Renowned Craftsman』and『Artisan』would be honorable titles given to skilled craftsmen on earth, but in Lambda, they were the common superior Jobs that all crafting-related Jobs shared, including Arms Smith. These jobs would be displayed as『Artisan: Arms Smith』or『Arms Smith: Artisan.』

And so in order to gain Experience Points and increase her level, Tarea had begun working with unknown materials such as those from Raptors and Flying Sharks, but she had been overenthusiastic.

「I understand how you feel, you know.」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu understood the feeling of being unable to acquire a Job. He really did.

As he said this, Vandalieu numbed the pain in Tarea's back with death-attribute magic, used【Spirit Form Transformation】on a part of his body and slipped it into Tarea's and eased the stiffening in her muscles.

『If I was able to do this on Earth, I might have been able to open my own store.』(Vandalieu)

Spirit Form Massages, we definitely understand your muscle pains better than low-frequency massagers! ... Probably not.

As Vandalieu released the tension in her muscles, he also secretly checked on the condition of her body, but there seemed to be no problems. There were no signs of declining organ function.

「Ah.」(Tarea)

Had she noticed?

「I just suddenly thought of something. Can you not manipulate metal with【Golem Transmutation】, Van-sama? I am sure that there are Golems made of copper, iron and Mythril.」(Tarea)

Apparently not. It wasn't as if Vandalieu was doing anything bad, but he felt a little relieved as he answered Tarea's question.

「I can. It uses up more Mana than when I make Golems from rocks, though. I've never had a chance to try it with Mythril, but I think it should work.」(Vandalieu)

Like Tarea, Vandalieu's exclusion from human society meant that his opportunity to work with metal was limited. However, he had tested it with small amounts of iron before, and he had succeeded in creating an Iron Golem that could fit in the palm of his hand.

「But I still can't do much other than make large changes to their shape. I can do things like make pit dwellings, fix houses made of stone and straighten bent pieces of metal, but for example...」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu used【Golem Transmutation】to change the shape of some copper coins and turned them into a sword.

「I see, this is no good.」(Tarea)

Tarea knew that this sword would be useless with a single glance. It was nothing but a lump of copper in the shape of a sword.

The blade had no edge at all; it wouldn't even be able to cut a branch. It was a thin, blunt weapon rather than a sword.

「This is how it is. I can't make a statue of stone and earth that resembles a person exactly, or apply fine details.」(Vandalieu)

As he spoke, Vandalieu used Golems of earth and stone to make a doll that resembling Tarea, but... while it did have the shape of a woman, the facial features were rough and details like the fingers were very crude.

Using【Golem Transmutation】like this, he couldn't create small details. Even when constructing houses, he could only create pit dwellings; building complicated, tall buildings like houses on Earth would be impossible.

Even when making weapons, at best he would be able to have molten metal pour itself into a mold... The casting process. Even that was impossible unless the mold for the desired shape was already made for him.

In order to become able to create smaller details, he would likely need skills like【Blacksmithing】and【Carpentry】in addition to the【Golem Transmutation】skills. In fact, he had already acquired the【Carpentry】skill by making pit dwellings using【Golem Transmutation.】That meant that he had gained the experience required to learn the techniques of【Carpentry】; in other words, he had actively used the【Carpentry】skill.

「Well, I can remove impurities from metal... like this.」(Vandalieu)

The copper sword began to quiver, and dust-like particles began to fall out of it right before their eyes. And then the sword of copper was shining brilliantly, as if it had completely transformed.

「Th-this is copper?! It shines like a gem... Van-sama, this is amazing! If you are able to purify copper like this and the same can be done with iron, this is a technique that would be desired all over the world!」(Tarea)

In Lambda, raising the purity of a substance to a hundred percent was impossible with technology alone. There were almost no examples of even skilled earth-attribute mages succeeding in doing such a thing. Historically, some mages had produced metal with a hundred percent purity, but only with minute amounts of metal used to begin with. Such techniques could not be used industrially.

And so if Vandalieu was able to create one-hundred-percent pure iron, he would rival those skilled historical mages... no, there was a chance that he would surpass them.

However, Vandalieu showed no signs of pride.

「That might be true, but this is actually really tiring.」(Vandalieu)

「Ah, it consumes a large quantity of Mana, doesn't it?」(Tarea)

「No, it really tires my brain out.」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu lay down and rested his forehead against Tarea's back. Feeling how hot it was, Tarea let out her voice in surprise.

「A fever?! Van-sama, your forehead is almost hot enough to burn me!」(Tarea)

「This is known as a magic-fever. If you surpass the limits of your Intelligence to force out a complicated spell, this is apparently what happens.」(Vandalieu)

The Intelligence stat displayed on one's