"Well, it does function, so I'm thinking of trying to make it more and more complete," said Vandalieu. "Please wait a little longer, Mom."
I suppose it doesn't work without the damaged parts being replaced by the originally-used materials. Unlike other materials, I still can't make detailed shapes out of Orichalcum, so... Should I make a Homunculus after all?
The level of Vandalieu's Golem Transmutation skill had increased, but not enough for him to be able to create precisely-shaped components from Orichalcum. The work needed to repair the device wasn't on the level of hand-making a semiconductor, but it was about as precise as trying to write letters on grains of rice. It wasn't simple to do.
Perhaps it was better for Vandalieu to find an evil god, make a contract and create a Homunculus to use as Darcia's body.
He had gained the knowledge he required to do that at the Mages' Guild in Nineland. Things like sacrificing virgins would be a tall obstacle for Vandalieu, but perhaps he could discuss this requirement with the evil gods.
I wonder if you can negotiate with gods? I probably wouldn't be able to threaten them.
In reality, he had already eaten an evil god, but as Vandalieu was unaware of this, he was under the impression that every god was certainly a superior being to him.
"I'll find the perfect evil god for the job," said Vandalieu.
"Levia-san, it seems that my son is going to run off to a bad religion; what should I do in this situation?" Darcia asked.
"U-umm, I-I think it will probably be fine!" said Levia.
Vandalieu had only been trying to reassure Darcia, but it seemed to have only made her more anxious. He hadn't said that he would necessarily join the evil gods, so why was she so worried?
_________________________
『You have acquired the Blacksmithing, Thread-reeling and Enhanced Body Part: Hair skills!』
『The Clothing skill has been combined with the Thread-reeling skill and the Enhanced Body Part: Hair skill has been combined with the Enhanced Body Part: Claws, Fangs, Tongue skill!』
『The levels of the Cooking, Enhanced Body Part: Hair, Claws, Fangs, Tongue and Thread-reeling skills have increased!』
Time passed, and it was now October.
After finishing creating his currency and treating Gopher and the other former slaves with Youth Transformation, Vandalieu dropped by the cultivation village's harvest festival.
He treated the villagers who were in poor health, and in return, he was treated with not the thin porridge made from rice and millets that he had been given before, but a dish resembling fried rice with proper ingredients, which had been made by stir-frying vegetables and meat along with southern rice.
"You're eating a lot; how many bowls is that?"
"This is my third."
Vandalieu had given the villagers three Horned Rabbits and a sack of walnuts as presents, so he wasn't holding back.
"Man, things were really crazy after you came back," said Fester. "Something happened at the slave-run mine, you see. The outer walls were destroyed, the mine turned into an empty area of land and all of the soldiers and slaves turned into skeletons."
"What did you say, is that true, I can't believe it," Vandalieu said with his usual expressionless voice and flat tone; he was the perpetrator – the main perpetrator at that – of this incident.
Both his expressionlessness and flat tone were nothing out of the ordinary, so it seemed that the others hadn't noticed.
... The fact that Vandalieu's expression didn't change and reveal his true emotions unless he put conscious effort into it came in handy at times like this, too.
"Yeah, the wall was apparently destroyed from outside, so it was probably monsters that appeared. They didn't find any footprints or tracks, though."
"So the soldiers and slaves killed by the monsters probably turned into Undead."
It seemed that this was the conclusion reached by the Knights' Order that had investigated the incident. Vandalieu's effort of using Golem Transmutation to make monster bones resemble Titan skeletons had paid off.
"Fortunately, it seems that the monsters that destroyed the outer wall moved south from where the mine was afterwards, though."
Those investigating seemed to have thought that monsters were the culprits since there were no traces of armed forces having moved in the area, and since there were no monster tracks, the monsters had simply flown off somewhere else.
I'm sure that there will be some who have made the connection between this event and the fact that the Demon King's seal was removed, but... I'm sure they won't know.
Nobody would dream that Vandalieu simply happened to have removed the champion's seal and released a part of the Demon King (his blood) during his quest to rescue the slaves at the mine.
In fact, Heinz's party and members of the Church of Alda were just as perplexed about the incident at the slave-run mine as Vandalieu had expected they would be. Considering the timing of the incidents, they probably weren't unrelated, but they wondered, why had the second incident occurred there?
For the Hartner Duchy, it was quite an important location, as it was the duchy's only source of mineral resources other than Dungeons. However, it was doubtful as to whether it would be a likely place targeted by the one who had undone the Demon King's seal, or the Demon King's fragment itself.
It wasn't as if there had been other sealed fragments of the Demon King, nor were there other evil gods involved. As long as they didn't realize that the one who had removed the Demon King's seal was someone related to the former refugees of Talosheim, they would only be able to wonder about how strange it all was.
And it seemed that they hadn't realized this fact yet.
The fact that this cultivation village had gone unchecked was proof that those investigating the incident hadn't come anywhere near the truth.
Vandalieu's familiars, the Lemures in the sky over the village, confirmed that no lookouts of spies had been stationed here.
"Thanks to that, the adventurers and knights passed through the highway from Niarki, so Oyaji-san was all excited about it," said Kasim. "Now he's downhearted about the fact that we don't know if traveling merchants will come this way anymore, though."
Kasim and his friends, who didn't know about the various things happening behind the scenes, were being carefree and enjoying the festival. Seeing them was truly therapeutic for Vandalieu.
"Things are hard on Lina though, since she has more work to do now."
"Come to think of it, weren't you three included in the group sent to exterminate the Skeletons in the mines?" Vandalieu asked.
Actually, because of the Lemures, Vandalieu already knew that Kasim and his friends had been a part of the extermination force, but he decided to ask because he thought that it would be unnatural if he didn't.
"Of course we were. Just by participating, we were paid a reward that we can use for something other than food."
"Skeletons are Rank 2. They're enemies that even we can defeat, and there were lots of people in the extermination force."
"And the men of the village... and even some of the women, have started hunting Goblins to make the Gobu-Gobu that you taught us about. They go out in groups of five and hunt them with handmade spears and bows, so there haven't been any Goblins appearing near the village lately."
Vandalieu had been watching through the Lemures, so he already knew this, but the people of the village were sturdy. In fact, it was their sturdiness that had brought them this far.
"But there was something different about those Skeletons," said Kasim. "They were attacking the other guys normally, but when it came to fighting us, they were like..."
"It was like they were training with us. No, both our weapons and theirs were real, so we did defeat them properly," said Fester.
"It was supposed to be a real battle, and even though it was a real battle, it kind of felt like training as well. Also, I felt like there was something watching over us from somewhere as well," Zeno added.
How to fight enemies wielding long weapons, enemies faster than them, enemies that outnumbered them, enemies that included both Archers and Shield-bearers? Kasim's party felt that they had been tested on these subjects one after another.
Of course, this had been the result of Vandalieu having given the Skeletons instructions, using the Lemures and Undead insects that he had left behind. He had used a countless number of winged insects and made them form letters to give orders to the Skeletons.
"I've heard that Undead tend to repeat the actions that they performed when they were alive. Perhaps those Skeletons were previously instructors for new adventurers?" Vandalieu suggested.
"I see," said Kasim. He and his friends seemed satisfied with this explanation. It seemed that they now assumed that the gaze that Zeno felt was also that of one of the Skeletons.
The truth was that none of those Skeletons had been good people while they were alive, however.
"Come to think of it, what happened to that priest-san?" Vandalieu asked. "I haven't seen him around."
The priest of Alda's peaceful faction who had left the village, saying that he was heading for the city of Niarki... or rather, the simple life-attribute mage and spy who was disguised as a priest, Froto. This man was nowhere to be seen in the village that was crowded with people for the harvest festival.
"We have no idea, either. It's not just this Seventh Cultivation Village; it seems that the people of the other cultivation villages haven't seen him, either," said Kasim.
"I asked the people in the extermination force, and they said they didn't know of any priests like that. How about you, Vandalieu? Didn't you see him when you went to the city?" Fester asked.
"Fester, it's awkward for me to approach the Church of Alda," Vandalieu told him. "Unfortunately, I didn't see him there."
"I see... I hope nothing has happened to him."
The three young adventurers looked worried.
Vandalieu nodded in agreement. "Me too. But I think he's probably doing fine, though," he said.
He still didn't know that Froto had been a spy. Even the Lemures would have been noticed if they got too close no matter how transparent they were, at most, they could only watch people's movements from afar.
The Fangs of Dark Nights in the city of Niarki had been eliminated by Edgar, one of the members of the Five-colored Blades, faster than Vandalieu had expected, leaving him with no way to gather further information.
As a result, Vandalieu was under the impression that Froto was an unusually virtuous clergyman despite being a believer of Alda.
"By the way, what are you going to do now?"
"Starting from tomorrow, I'm going to go around all of the cultivation villages and indulge myself in the harvest festivals," said Vandalieu. "After that, I was thinking of going to the city to get some essentials and visit some distant relatives of my mother."
"Distant relatives of your mother, do you mean –?!"
"No, my father was the Vampire among my parents."
"Ah, is that right? No, I was sure that..."
If Eleanora had been present, there might have been a misunderstanding. Vandalieu knew that this bothered her quite a lot, so he was glad that he had come alone.
"Oi, the main event is starting soon," said the oyaji from the jack-of-all-trades store, calling Vandalieu over. "The stone statue is going to be put in the shrine, so come over here!"
And so, that day's conversation ended there.
Incidentally, the quality of the statue of Vandalieu created by the former stonemason Ivan was... questionable. As the entire thing was made of stone, it had failed to portray the color of his hair, skin and odd-colored eyes, so it was possible that nobody would know that it was a statue of Vandalieu unless they were told.
Skill explanation:
【Automatic Mana Recovery】,【Increased Mana Recovery Rate】
Those with the Automatic Mana Recovery skill recover Mana automatically no matter what they are doing... When they are resting, exercising or even in the middle of reciting the incantation for a spell.
The Increased Mana Recovery Rate skill is a skill that increases the rate at which Mana recovers while resting.
Their names are similar, but they are separate skills.
Automatic Mana Recovery restores a fixed percentage of the skill owner's total Mana pool, while Increased Mana Recovery Rate reduces the amount of time required for Mana to recover regardless of the amount of Mana that needs to be recovered. Thus, those with large Mana pools often desire the Automatic Mana Recovery skill.
However, the Automatic Mana Recovery skill has the flaw of being difficult to acquire, and even after acquiring it, it requires training by expending all available Mana to increase the total Mana pool. In addition, the rate of natural Mana recovery is dependent on one's health and mental condition, but many mages are aware that sleeping is a way of drastically increasing it, so they tend to be fixated on the environment in which they sleep and the number of hours they sleep.
The fact that well-known mages carry pillows for traveling is even detailed in their biographies.
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