Chapter 476 Culture and Education
In the scheduled report, I possessed Narikin and pa.s.sed along information to NaanaRei and the others.
“The Sunstar region?”
“Yeah. There’s apparently some big shot there trying to a.s.sa.s.sinate us.”
“Great timing. We’ll be heading there anyway because of our information on the [Dungeon]. Though it’s a town that says everything is equal under the light of the Light G.o.d’s suns.h.i.+ne, It’s a town made up entirely of humans.”
Sunstar seemed to be attracting people using the slogan that even second and third cla.s.s citizens could work together in equality, but it stank of something shady going on. When I inquired into it a bit further, it seemed as if there might be some hidden dungeon there.
“What in the world kind of torture did Dolche-sama resort to? A client’s information is the most sensitive, confidential information there is. For him to confess even that information… fufu.”
“The quality of these a.s.sa.s.sins have been declining. Are they running on a budget after failing over and over?”
“Oh, that’s possible…”
NaanaRei nodded before continuing.
“… By the way, what’s with the getup?”
“Getup?”
The situation consisted of Rokufa sitting right next to me in some pretty spa.r.s.e clothing. How could I put it… Err. I was having trouble figuring out where I should look.
“… Ohohoh? We’re a couple, aren’t we? What’s so strange about a wife sitting next to her husband in her loungewear in their inn room?”
“No, I mean—”
It wasn’t Rokuko herself at that moment, but Rokufa’s face was exactly like Rokuko’s since she was generally directed by her. Also, her chest was flouris.h.i.+ng.
Rokufa, looking like that, seemed as if she was preparing to get to sleep right after the report to save on lamp magic stones and was sitting on a large bed in a fairly lightweight gown.
“… Oh! My lady, master desires you. You should take it off.”
“Is that what he meant? My apologies for being so untactful.”
“That’s not it! It’s the opposite, opposite! It’s hard for me if you show too much skin. Narikin, please knock it off with that immodest behavior.”
Narikin—who was possessing Tran to switch out for me—flew over with something that looked like a cardigan held in his beak. So much power for such a tiny bird…
[Rokufa, you should put something on for now. It appears you are being immodest.]
“Immodest? Hmm, the only men who may see my skin are Narikin, who Rokuko-sama has determined to be her husband, and master. This is acknowledgement of being a considerably chaste wife.”
Dungeon monsters are pretty out there in the weirdest places… no, wait, was Rokufa’s way of thinking the standard here? I took a glance over to NaanaRei.
“It’s a fairly common thing in both the Holy Kingdom and the Light G.o.d’s Decree, master. After all, this country practices polygamy, so wives that only expose themselves to one or two people are considered exceptionally modest.”
“Actual polyamory? First time I’ve heard of something like that.”
From what I understood, it was having multiple husbands and multiple wives in the same household, forming something like a community. In other words, polyamory encouraged both harems and reverse harems—like a system that existed solely for that purpose.
“So long as the couples are well-balanced and everyone pulls their wait, there usually aren’t any issues with it. It’s common for second-cla.s.s citizens to party together and capture a dungeon as a family. Whenever children are born, everyone chips in in raising them.”
It would prevent parties from breaking up due to intra-party love affairs, sure. Since child care would be taken care of by multiple people, the burden would be minimized. Moreover, the children would be able to receive a variety of educations from their parents and have a better chance at getting a job role they wanted. It all seemed good.
… It was not only for the sake of letting big shots have a harem, but also a system to promote the spirit of destroying every dungeon found.
Even the human supremacy might have been due to unifying the children’s race to [Human] so as to prevent any strange conflicts or disputes due to the marital structure…Beastkin children were easy to identify due to their b.e.s.t.i.a.l characteristics, after all1. Moreover, beastkin were overly biased towards being warriors… is what I’m told.
If you wanted to construct a party that could fully capture dungeons, it’d definitely be better to have a good balance.
Yep. The Light G.o.d’s Decree goes the distance.
“There are laws that allow you to take multiple wives or husbands back in the empire as well so long as you headed an aristocratic family, though commoners there are definitely monogamous.”
“That’s what I’m more familiar with… Rokufa, please don’t be affected too strongly by the Holy Kingdom. It’s just an infiltration.”
“Ah—I-I see. So that was it, I understand. As you wish.”
＊
When I ended my [Possession] and returned to the inn, I saw that Meat had snuck into my bed. It was time to head to sleep over there, but it had already been time to sleep back here. Let’s just use her as a pillow and get to sleep as normal.
She stirred.
“Come to think of it, Meat, you caught that a.s.sa.s.sin, huh? Good job.”
“… Yeah.”
She let out a proud huff from her nose and wagged her tail as I gave her head a nice patting.
“Let’s give you a reward. Is there anything you want?”
“… Can we do the hug pillow stuff?”
“No, we always do that… here, wait a minute.”
I opened my [Storage] and looked for something good… Man, I really have to sort this stuff a bit…
Ah, right.
“I’ll make you something out of orichalc.u.m. Is there anything you want?”
I’d managed to succeed in ma.s.s-producing the thumb-sized orichalc.u.m golem I’d set as a dungeon boss with the sp.a.w.ner I got from [Father] back then.
Well, it took a month to resp.a.w.n, to calling it ma.s.s-production was a bit of a stretch… but still, get a thumb-sized amount of orichalc.u.m every month was itself a level of treasure that would let you do whatever you wanted in life.
If nothing else, I had two boss sp.a.w.ners, so I could get double the amount every month if I set the other one to use the orichalc.u.m golem as well.
Processing it was difficult since such a small number of people in the market could, making the places it could be sold heavily limited… but since it was a dungeon product, it could be sold directly in a processed form.
Still, it was safer to not go about selling it, since it would attract a heap of adventurers looking for orichalc.u.m. If I did that, I’d have my hands full with the inn and managing the dungeon’s defenses.
I wasn’t having any troubles with my day to day life either way, not to mention the gold coins I was getting from Wataru making my savings pretty hefty.
“A dagger would be good… but there isn’t enough orichalc.u.m, right?”
“I could do it if just a part of it’s orichalc.u.m. The overall weight of the finished dagger shouldn’t be too different than from if I made it entirely from orichalc.u.m. It shouldn’t be too different to use, either.”
“Alright, that then.”
“Okaaay, I can’t make it entirely out of orichalc.u.m, but I can at least make the front and back side of the blade out of it. I’ll make two.”
I repeatedly cast [Create Golem] to shape the orichalc.u.m, replacing the front and back sides of the blades with it. A so-called re-tempering of a dull blade. Not that I was actually tempering it or anything.
By the way, the reason why re-tempering a dull blade is usually a bad thing is because it causes the blade to be so fragile and sharp that it immediately becomes unusable. In other words, since orichalc.u.m was ant.i.thetical to fragility, its meaning was inverted. It would make the strongest blades.
“Now on to the cutting edges…”
Orichalc.u.m was too hard to sharpen, so I had to manually generate the cutting edges as well… But all I had to do was soften the metal, then pinch it to make it thinner. After that, I could shape it while maintaining its razor-thin edge… Ah, do I even need to make them blade golems? Let’s do it just in case.
“Alright, I’m done. Time?”
“Yes. Two of them in fifteen minutes, wonderful work.”
“Alright, here you go.”
“Thank you, Goshujin-sama.”
Meat’s tail wagged in delight as I gave her the scabbards.
… For such a young girl to be happy about getting weapons… Hmm. Why do I get the feeling I’ve made a mistake in her upbringing…