Chapter 230: The Garbage Processing Plant and Wist-kun’s First Love (1/2)
The next day.
This afternoon I’ll be dropping by the Garbage Processing Plant and the factories to check for any problems in their operation. I’ll also be taking a look at the slimes holding post there. Especially since there will probably be some scavenger slimes that can split since I left them there yesterday. I’ll have to retrieve those new slimes and form a contract with them.
…And so, I visited the garbage processing plant. When I got there, there were already a lot of employees bringing in garbage. I also noticed a familiar face watching from the wayside.
“Good morning, Branch Head Taylor!” [Ryouma]
“! Ahh, Ryouma-kun. Good morning.” [Taylor]
“Is something the matter, Branch Head? Why are you standing here on your own?” [Ryouma]
“I suddenly found myself with some free time, so I thought I’d take a walk. I figured I might as well see how everyone is doing.” [Taylor]
“You did introduce us to some good drivers.” [Ryouma]
With how big the city was, just garbage collectors alone wouldn’t be able to efficiently collect garbage. To that end, carriages and monster carriages were necessary. By the way, monster carriages are carriages pulled by monsters controlled by monster tamers. It was Branch Head Taylor who introduced us to the monster tamers that could handle monster carriages.
Apparently, the tamer guild was also having problems due to the large number of monster tamers looking for work.
Gimuru has its mines, so there are a lot of jobs to transport ore and people, but even those have a limit. A lot of monster tamers have come to town looking for work. Because of that all the available jobs were being saturated quickly.
What’s more was that most of the people were lured here because they were told stuff like, “the Jamil family is descended from the founder of monster taming, so their territories employ a lot of monster taming’ and ‘if you learn monster taming, you’ll be able to do more jobs and have an easier time making money’. There were even some who were told that the tamer guild would take care of them as long as they just learned how to form a contract with a monster.
In other words, these people just learned monster taming to ‘find’ work. They’ve never actually worked as monster tamers, and neither did they possess the heart of a monster tamer. A lot of new monster tamers like that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Naturally, the guild would have a hard time dealing with them.
True enough, cases where monsters have rebelled against their tamers and gone wild have increased. There were even cases where people other than the tamers were hurt too.
Fortunately, the branch head had taken measures beforehand, so the damages the troublesome monster tamers caused were minimized. Because of that word of the guild’s issues hasn’t spread much.
Despite that the guild still had to take responsibility when people affiliated with them caused trouble.
In the meet-up a few days ago, the branch head was heard grumbling, saying, “I’m not asking for much! I’m not even going to ask them to take pride in being monster tamers! All I ask is that they have some awareness and responsibility when handling their monsters…”
It must be hard, Branch Head.
And so, in order to avoid having these beginners damage the town or unrelated people, they sent a lot of them to me, a veteran who had plenty of time on his hands.
“Oh?” [Man]
When a carriage carrying garbage pa.s.sed by us, the man driving it nodded to us with a smile. Must be an acquaintance of the branch head since he returned the greeting.
“…By the way, a lot of garbage is being transported, but it doesn’t seem to stink, no?” [Taylor]
“We built the garbage processing plant in the middle of town, after all, so I took special care to make sure that it won’t stink.” [Ryouma]
It’s normal for people to feel bad when they see or smell something filthy. This part of town may have once been part of the slums, but it’s still best to be careful.
Also, while the collection and transport of garbage may be an important job, it’s a stinky job, so people have a tendency to look down on people who do them.
As such, I’ve taken it upon myself to give the garbage processing plant as clean of an image as possible.
“To that end, I isolated the stench coming from the garbage collector carriages as much as possible. I also required the use of box-shaped carriages and covered wagons, so people won’t have to see any of the garbage. The part of the carriage that holds the barrels and jute bags filled with garbage have been treated in a generous amount of the deodorant slime’s odor-absorbing liquid to prevent the smell from leaking out. The workers are also required to wear their work clothes, and are even instructed how to groom themselves. The Bamboo Forest’s deodorizing liquid is also being distributed to the workers. They are required to use it after work and before meeting people.” [Ryouma]
“Yes, I received a report on that before… Right, so that’s how you’re keeping the smell in check.” [Taylor]
On top of that, the garbage processing plant was built in a simple rectangular shape with no special features. The first floor is currently being used to collect the garbage and dispose of them.
The garbage carriages are meant to go through a large door with their garbage, then once their load has been unloaded, they are to go through the opposite door and start collecting garbage once more.
A one-way wind barrier has been erected on the entrance, exit, and windows of the processing area, so the smell from outside can’t enter. The smell from inside won’t leak out either. A wind magic tool is used for exhaust inside the processing area, but before the air is exhausted, the air goes through the filter slime’s filter that’s been treated with the deodorant slime’s abilities to make the air as clean as possible before it is returned outside.