Edgar and Delizah nodded in agreement. Jennifer and Diana weren't here right now, but they would probably think the same.
Lord Belton having an ulterior motive wouldn't be the end of the world, but ignoring the Demon King's fragment that had escaped the seal could indeed result in the world's destruction.
This was true even if there were other pieces of the Demon King whose seals had been broken.
Naturally, the Demon King had been sealed away in the age before Vida gave birth to her new races. Even the Pure-breed Vampires, who were feared now, had been normal people back then, fighting alongside the gods and the champions against the Demon King. It wouldn't be strange to think that the Pure-breed Vampires knew of the places where the pieces of the Demon King had been sealed.
Members of Vida's races, such as the Pure-breed Vampires, had betrayed her and sided with the remnants of the Demon King's army. It was only a natural course of events for them to be removing the Demon King's seals and using his fragments simply for power.
This was the result of the battles between heroes and great evil that had been written in a hundred thousand years of history.
"It seems that this man named Kanata possessed a powerful unique skill, but it's difficult to imagine that there was someone controlling him," said Heinz. "His actions were simply too... how to describe it? Senseless."
"That's true, it's strange, isn't it?" said Delizah. "He repeatedly performed flashy, crudely-executed crimes before reaching Nineland, even made the effort of going to the Adventurers' Guild and declaring his name, and then suddenly he was a corpse buried in the collapsed underground cemetery."
Nobody knew Kanata's past, where he had been born or what Jobs and skills he had. And yet, his actions before he reached Nineland had been those of an outlaw who simply possessed great power. But he had somehow entered the underground cemetery that had been concealed in a very specific location.
It was completely incomprehensible.
"This is just my intuition, but the man named Kanata might just have happened to be there and actually has no relation to the one who removed the Demon King's seal," said Heinz.
The thing that Heinz found suspicious was the information that he had gained from informants other than Kinarp and his subordinates... information that there was a Noble-born Vampire woman who had betrayed Birkyne, and that she and her new master were out there somewhere.
There was a beggar who had seen that Vampire woman... the one allegedly known as Eleanora, going in and out of Kinarp's mansion.
From a distance, the beggar had seen a beautiful woman with red hair entering the mansion's back entrance, holding a large number of shopping bags. Nobody, not even the beggar who had happened to be given leftover foods at a spot a little distance away from the mansion, had given her a second glance.
But Edgar, who had heard that there was a beautiful, red-haired woman in the city of Niarki from one of the underlings of the Fangs of Dark Nights, felt that something was wrong when he heard about this information from the beggar.
And upon conducting an investigation, they had found that she had vanished on the day the castle sank.
"It didn't look like the underling knew the name of this Eleanora's master," said Jennifer. "It seemed as if he had been forbidden to speak the name by a Pure-breed Vampire."
"That must be an extremely powerful individual," said Diana. "It could be a newly-awakened Pure-breed Vampire. I think it is likely the one responsible for breaking and manipulating the minds of Kinarp and his subordinates."
The two of them had returned after collecting all of the materials.
Now that the party had all gathered together, Heinz began speaking. "Even if it is a Pure-breed Vampire, we cannot simply leave someone who has undone a seal to release a fragment of the Demon King," he said. "I cannot allow the existence of someone who plays with life and desecrates souls. There is no more big prey left in Nineland; let's chase after the Vampire called Eleanora starting from tomorrow... though this means we'll have to leave the Trial of Zakkart for later."
"It's fine; the world is in danger, isn't it?" said Jennifer. "There's no doubt that we're going to be victorious whichever one we go after, anyway."
"I'm sure Martie would forgive us as well," said Delizah.
The party seemed to agree with Heinz's decision, except for Edgar, the only one with doubt in his eyes.
The time that a woman resembling the Vampire Eleanora was spotted in Niarki was the exact same time that the Dhampir called Vandalieu appeared. Well, there is no information about Vandalieu in Nineland, but... in the end, Vandalieu's route... If he is the son of that Dark Elf from back then, I never managed to find out how he crossed the border between the Mirg shield-nation and the Orbaume Kingdom, passed through the Sauron Duchy into the Hartner Duchy and then came all the way to the city of Niarki. Are Heinz and I just overthinking things?
Edgar wondered whether Vandalieu had come to Niarki through the same route that the Five-colored Blades had taken; he would have never imagined that Vandalieu had crossed the Boundary Mountain Range that very few had ever crossed before.
That was why he never bothered thinking about finding Vandalieu's trail in the cultivation villages to the south of Niarki.
______________________________
Vandalieu was munching on the fruits that were similar to apples, together with Pauvina and Rapiéçage.
"Van-sama, it seems that you are often eating fruits these days?" said Tarea.
"Yes; they're very hard, fresh, very hard fruit with sweet juice," said Vandalieu, mentioning the important feature of the fruit twice.
"... It looks like your jaw will get tired," Tarea remarked.
"But they're delicious, you know?" Pauvina told her.
"S... weet..." Rapiéçage groaned.
These apple-like fruits were very delicious, but... their flesh was as hard as a cow's thighbone. With the Superhuman Strength skill, Vandalieu and the others could bite into them normally, but normal people would be literally unable to make a dent* in them.
TLN*: The Japanese phrase for "can't make a dent/progress with [something]", if literally interpreted, means something like, "teeth won't last/survive."
They were so hard that the average Ghoul and Titan would soon get tired jaws while trying to eat them. Pete, the centipede monster that Vandalieu had equipped, didn't even pay the fruits any attention.
"They're very hard, but for some reason, one of the Ents I brought from the Eclipse King's Orchard keeps giving them to me frequently," said Vandalieu.
Every time Vandalieu passed by, this Ent would always give him this fruit. He accepted them, and thus, he had begun to eat multiple of these fruits every day.
Pauvina and Rapiéçage were happy with this, though.
"I am sure that this Ent was a well-known fruit merchant who sold a lot of fruit when it was alive," said Tarea.
Vandalieu didn't really remember if there had been a spirit like that, but he wasn't really concerned whether this theory was right or not. It was currently nothing more than an Ent that he had tamed.
"Now then, I have to come back to the real world and work hard in casting coins for the new currency," said Vandalieu.
It seemed that Vandalieu's rest and escape from reality had ended.
He exhaled as he looked at the numerous failed products in front of him... the stone containers that were filled with a blackish-purple, muddy liquid.
The problem with introducing a new currency to Talosheim was the metal used as the raw material.
Vandalieu had brought back coins of the Baum currency of the Orbaume Kingdom with the exception of the most valuable platinum coins (which weren't usually handled by anyone other than royalty, nobles and wealthy merchants). The Undead Titan blacksmith, Datara, had accurately determined the relative ratios of the metals in the coins.
As Talosheim would one day be trading with the duchies of the Orbaume Kingdom with the exception of the Hartner Duchy, it was important to match the value of the coins with the Baum.
However, there were no stable sources of gold and silver in Talosheim.
Gold and silver couldn't be mined in Doran's Aquatic Caverns. Gold and silver nuggets sometimes appeared in the Dungeon's treasure chamber, but a sufficient amount to create coins couldn't be harvested with this method in a stable manner. It was unknown as to what principles the Dungeon used to decide what treasures it generated in the treasure chamber, so they couldn't rely on it too much.
Even the Labyrinth Creation skill couldn't freely manipulate the contents of the treasure chamber.
Thus, Vandalieu had to create coins using the iron and copper that could be reliably mined, but if Vandalieu used iron and copper to create coins with the same value as the gold coins that were worth a thousand Baums and ten thousand Baums, they would end up too large and heavy; they would be nothing more than large lumps of metal with not even a shred of convenience.
Vandalieu had considered making paper money rather than coins, but he was still only able to produce sturdy Japanese paper in small amounts, and the printing technology available was still crude. Thus, it was better to use coins after all.
"The name of the currency was decided quickly though," Vandalieu remarked.
The currency was known as the Luna. It was a play on words; the coins of the capital of the sun that was ruled by the Eclipse King were named after the moon.
The design of the coins had been mostly decided; there were already prototype coins for the one-Luna copper coin, the five-Luna copper coin and half-Luna iron coin. Datara had produced these coins with such quality that they were not at all inferior to the copper Amid and Baum coins.
And then Vandalieu had come up with the idea of making metal in order to create coins worth ten Lunas or more.
"When you mentioned the idea, I thought you were just being crazy as usual," said Datara.
"Well, it should be considered an idea that isn't confined to the limits of common sense!" Tarea exclaimed.
Pauvina blinked upon hearing their words. "... The two of you are saying the same thing," she muttered.
She was a clever girl.
The creation of metal that Vandalieu had in mind wasn't making an alloy like bronze, but using iron and bronze to create a new magical metal. Thus, both Datara and Tarea's opinions were correct.
Magical metals were metals filled with Mana, with Orichalcum at the top of the list followed by others such as Mythril, Adamantite, Damascus Steel and Obsidian. Other than Orichalcum, it had been more or less established that all of these were created from lesser metals.
Mythril and Adamantite were produced when regular silver and gold were soaked in Mana for tens of thousands of years, becoming naturally refined.
Damascus Steel and Obsidian were refined from ordinary metals by skilled blacksmiths.
Datara could apparently create Obsidian if he had the materials. It was refined by using iron as a base and forging it for a whole day while adding a very tiny amount of Mythril or Adamantite. But he had said that staying up all night to make produce two or three swords' worth of Obsidian was the best he could do; it would be impossible for him to create a currency with it.
Of course, Vandalieu didn't have the Blacksmithing skill, so it was impossible for him to mass-produce this metal with Golem Transmutation.
Thus, Vandalieu had been trying to create a new magical metal by pouring Mana into metal equal to the amount contained within Mythril and Adamantite.
It would normally be impossible, but Vandalieu had thought that he could do it by pouring hundreds of millions of Mana into the metal and using Inanimate Aging, the spell that made time flow faster for its target.
And it turned out to be actually possible. The iron and copper had essentially been soaked in death-attribute Mana for tens of thousands of years, transforming into magical metals... liquid metals.
"Hmm, I did manage to make new magical metals, but I can't turn this into coins, can I?" said Vandalieu.
"They are liquids, after all," said Datara.
The metal was the same weight and size as what Vandalieu had started with, but he was troubled by the fact that they were black and purple, mercury-like liquid metals.
"Shall we call them Death Metal and Dark Copper for now?" Vandalieu suggested.
Although they were liquid, they were indeed magical metals; it was certain that they would possess special properties. Depending on their special properties, they would have their uses.
Whether or not they could be turned into coins.
It would be interesting if I could make armor out of liquid metal; I wonder if it's possible?
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