Chapter 650: Summer Spirit Festival 8
As for Cosmos-san who suddenly appeared, Emma has no idea.
“Cosmos……sama, who is this person? A dark elf named Ashton also mentioned that name”
“A, Ah……”
Emma is probably the only person in this town who would call the minister by the phrase 「A dark elf named Ashton」. It is very strange for Emma, a young girl who looks human (though she is ridiculously beautiful for a human), to say it in a polite but slightly superior tone of voice.
“Is this girl a dragon too?”
“!”
Cosmos-sama asks me without hesitation and my shoulders jolt a little.
“D, Did you know?”
“We get all kinds of information, big and small♪”
“……R, Right. Yes. This girl is one of them”
I look around and secretly affirm this. The information that we have dragons could cause a panic if I don’t keep it as quiet as possible. At Helicon, Laila exposed her naked body and appeased the perverted men, so it was a relatively small-scale incident, but if a commotion had broken out in an unexpected place, there could have been injuries or deaths. That would be a bad awakening. Still……I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone at Carlos’s house is aware of it to some extent (even if they may not have seen it directly), but how does it leak out to the outside world……ah.
“Perhaps the minister is the source of the information……?”
“That’s surprising. Maybe he trusts me too, because sometimes he comes to me for advice on secret matters. Oh, of course I’m not spreading it around, you know? I only told you because you´re the person in question”
“……H, How much do you know?”
“The client that Hilda, Dianne and Nord are crazy about has brought dozens of dragons to a faraway country and if they wanted to, they could take control of Celesta by force in a day and I wonder how I should report this to the Merchant King……that’s all I know”
“He’s practically leaking information!”
Minister, were you really a competent big merchant? You are the grand elder of the Celeste cabinet, aren’t you?
“Ahaha, well, if it wasn’t from Ashton-san, I’d forget about it the next day because I was so drunk, but it’s true after all♪”
“……I’ll just say that the number of dozens isn’t exact. It’s three, for now. The ones who listen to me directly”
Emma looked like she wanted to say something, but I shut her up with a look. Don’t say anything complicated. Please.
“It’s pretty messed up♪”
“……Well, generally speaking”
That’s the normal perception.
“Hohee……Emma-chan, you’re a dragon”
“No wonder she looks so beautiful for a human. She has such fair skin in the summer”
Of the three sisters, Cima and Lucino seemed to have realized Emma’s true identity. Mira seemed to have a vague idea. Cima and Lucino don’t seem to think too deeply about things. Maybe that’s why only Mira is popular.
“But still, you are very calm, Cosmos-san……”
“N, well, I’ve been involved with dragons for a while in the past”
“Eh!?”
Involved!?
“Dragon rider……or something?”
“No, I wasn’t. I was just separated from my companion on a trip and ended up lost in a Dragon Palace”
That’s an amazing enough experience. No, that was my first encounter with Laila too.
“At that time, a dragon gave me a ride back to Talc. It also looked for my companion along the way. I was really saved. So I thought that what happened a hundred years ago wouldn’t be so bad……but it turned out to be pretty ba
“…………”
The Fire Dragon War was a time when people were reminded of the fear of dragons. Now it’s a legend for the short-lived species, but at that time, most of the elven forests outside the north were burned down and many towns were destroyed. Many of the long-lived species who know about those days tremble with unquestioning awe of dragons. So this person already knows both the gentle and harsh sides of dragons. ……I guess in that sense I don’t know more about dragons than she does. I’ve never seen a dragon in full-blown hostility, wreaking havoc on the human world.
“Well, that’s alright. Anyway, I feel safer knowing that I have a proper escort. What are your plans for the rest of the day? If not, would you like to relax in our store?”
Miss Cosmos claps her hands together in front of her chest. But Luna and Nord-san pull me away from her.
“I already have plans”
“I’m going to take my little brother for a leisurely tour of the market. If all you do is have sex, people will think that’s all there is to Dark Elven culture”
It seems that there is no argument that eroticism is an aspect of the Dark Elven culture.
“The market? It’s nice. Let’s go, let’s go”
Miss Cosmos is not at all put off by Luna and the others’ prickly attitude. Is it because she is an older woman? It doesn’t look that way from the outside.
“Cosmos, are you going to follow me like this?”
“Of course not♪ Didn’t you say I’ll get pregnant one of these days?”
“You’re serious about that?”
“Well, it’s not going to be that easy, so I’ll just have to persevere♪”
“Without confirming my intention, she is already planning to have me impregnate her. No, I heard that she already has offspring and I don’t doubt that she has the know-how and financial ability to give birth and raise them on her own.
“Does that mean you won’t leave until you have sex with me?
“Oh, you don’t like it?”
“No, that in itself is welcome, but……”
I wonder exactly how far she will go with me. I wonder if she will be satisfied with the first shot and go back. I feel vaguely uneasy. No, I don’t mean to imply that I’m disturbed, but I’m a little worried because some female slaves, like Luna, get into a fighting stance against women who are wimps.
“Really, you’re irresistible every time you meet a woman……though I never doubted it”
Gloria says half-heartedly. She probably had some questions about why I, who don’t look particularly rich or good-looking, was surrounded by female slaves with such strange enthusiasm, even if she asked me. But now that more and more radical girls are showing up one after another, I feel that I am once again becoming aware of the strange way I am being popular.
“Ah, are you the rumored erotic picture scroll painter?”
“……So that’s what you’ve heard. You’re not a quick learner……I’m Gloria”
“I’m Cosmos. Nice to meet you. Are you interested in my place too? I’m sure that a high-class brothel for dark elves is not very attractive to elven women”
“I’m interested, but what’s in it for me if you invite me……?”
“Huhuhu. Even if the customers over there aren’t keen, I have a grand plan to appeal to their company♪”
“I wonder if that’s something we should proceed with in secret……but thats fine”
The friendly Cosmos-san is already trying to win over Gloria. She’s active.
—————————————-
I heard that the market in Talc is also famous for its amazing history. Well, it is a town of long-lived species, so it is only natural that the market there also has a long-lived history. What is interesting is that gold coins, the Celesta currency, are basically not exchanged at the market.
“They have their own bills. Coins are too complicated to measure”
“Ah, I see……indeed”
It is easy to say that there are thousands of gold coins, but it is a big job to open a leather bag and see if there are that many coins. There are standard gemstones instead, but they can only be used directly at decent stores, so it doesn’t solve everything. Apparently, they dislike such procedures and it’s customary to trade with old-fashioned bills here.
“This is the bill. The big bill is not available now, but it is enough for a merchant’s entire fortune, right? A medium bill is worth about a head of cattle. A small bill is worth a basket of vegetables. If we can’t cover our expenses with these, we barter directly with them”
Mira-sama unfolded and showed a simple-looking bill that was cut into an elaborate polygonal shape. It was stamped with a unique color stamp and the contents of the stamp were also in a unique ornate script that I could not read. Maybe it is not the current Northwestern language.
“Is that the kind of thing you do for bartering?”
“Yes, that’s it”
Mira-sama nodded as she saw an ogre lady and a young dark elf man exchanging individual vegetables for each other and shaking hands at a stall right in front of her.
“If you try to settle things by handing over gold coins because it’s too much of a bother, they’ll obviously get annoyed, so that’s a no-go. The old style is established here, so gold coin transactions are seen as, what do you call it, unattractive?”
“It’s an unfamiliar mindset……”
“For people who have been trading and living here for hundreds of years, the Celesta system is a recent development. They think it’s just a new fashionable thing”
“……Do you mean to say that many dark elves are also conservative?”
“Well, don’t be so harsh. The dark elves also tend to like new things more than elves, but fundamentally they are not so different in some ways”
“I don’t mean to complain”
Not being able to trade with gold coins is rare in Trot, but it’s common in small colonies in Celesta. I’m not saying that I’ve been around a lot of them, but I’ve heard about them from fellow crossbowmen. When I heard that people around my house used to live by bartering, I thought, 「That’s inconvenient」 and at the same time I thought, 「That sounds kind of interesting」.
“Since we’re here, shall we cook dinner for Andy-kun and his friends tonight with the ingredients we got from here?”
“Great, great!”
“Well, most of the things we buy back home are stocked by the servants”
“But it’s better to use ingredients you’ve carefully selected yourself”
The three sisters were excited. Now that I think about it, I remember them being cooking sisters because of their performance at the last Spirit Festival.
“Andy-kun, you’re going to have to help us out a little bit, too. A bag of wheat, half a fistful of rock salt, two coconuts and a basket of bananas”
Cima handed me a few small bills. Is this all I need to buy?
“Bananas”
Luna, who had seemed uninterested until then, suddenly perked up.
“Banana……? What’s that?”
“It’s a yellow stick-shaped fruit that grows in bunches like an ogre’s finger”
“I’ve heard of them too, but I’ve never seen one in person”
Hilda tells Emma, who seems to have never heard of them and Gloria happily scurries around the unusual sight.
“Can you get bananas here too?”
“The price is higher than on the south coast, but there are people who bring them. This is the world’s biggest Talc market”
“You can eat them, lick them and suck them♪ They’re an essential prop in a brothel♪”
Nord-san and Cosmos-san assure each other.
“Then Luna and the others go find coconuts and bananas. I’ll get wheat and rock salt”
We split up. Luna’s eyes were burning with appetite, but she wouldn’t eat any of them. After Luna, Hilda and Gloria disappeared into the crowd, I went looking for wheat and rock salt with Emma, Nord and Cosmos-san. They are not rare items, however. If you walk around for a bit, you can usually find a stall that sells them.
“I’ll take a bag of it. ……Ah, there’s rock salt here too. That too”
“I’ll take three small bills”
“Three?”
“One for the wheat and two for the rock salt. This salt is the best from the Blue Snake”
“I’d be happy with half of this”
“Unfortunately, we can’t sell it at a discount. That’s the last one. Look, what a beautiful crystal it is. If we break it, it’ll go down in value”
A middle-aged dark elf (he looks like a middle-aged man, so he must be very old) sniffed. I had only two bills left, since I had given them to Luna and the others. What should I do? I don’t know.
“Don’t say that♪”
“It’s cooler to be generous with the last one……?”
Cosmos-sama and Nord-san leaned forward and appealed. Cosmos-sama squeezes her arms to show the cleavage of her big breasts, which are voluminous for her body and Nord-san provokes him by crawling her fingers meaningfully into the deep slit at her waist. The owner, who gulped at this, seemed to have sensed my gaze and straightened his posture, but his eyes still wandered back and forth as if he couldn’t take his eyes off of the two women’s intimate parts.
“If you can’t give me a break, that’s okay, we can go somewhere else”
The owner raised his hand and said, ah, I know, I know, I know.
“Well, I guess this rock salt would be happier if it went to a beautiful woman. Two pieces will do. Take it”
“♪”
“Yay♪”
Nord-san and Cosmos-sama high-five each other. Beautiful women have an advantage. Especially those who can use it as a weapon.