episode_0052

Count Carbon, who pondered for a moment while making a sound, found it difficult to make a decision.

Rather, as if he still had doubts, he asked me one more question.

“I still don’t quite understand what Baron Steele is talking about: an unmanned carriage. Can I see that unmanned carriage in person and make a decision?”

I don’t know if it was because he didn’t actually see the blacksmith shop I was running, but Count Carbone didn’t seem to easily understand things about driverless carriages. This seemed to be because it was common sense that a carriage always needed a driver.

How can I make Count Carbon understand? After thinking for a while, I decided to give him a simple example. There are no Skeleton Mages to spare right now, but all I had to do was manipulate the Skeleton to look like a Skeleton Mage. After all, it was meant to make Count Carbon understand.

After connecting a skeletal horse and a cart skeleton, he immediately placed an ordinary goblin skeleton in the carriage seat. Also, the goblin skeleton was made to extend both hands forward as if controlling the skeleton horse, and the skeleton horse was made to look like it was moving according to what the goblin skeleton was controlling.

“Originally, I control the skeletal horse from where the skeleton is sitting, but the skeleton takes over as it is now. In reality, it’s not an ordinary skeleton, but a Skeleton Mage is there.”

“Ah, I guess it’s called unmanned because there are only skeletons. I understand.”

Count Carbon, who saw and understood what was happening with only skeletons and no people, nodded and responded positively.

“First of all, I will partially allow logistics transport using only skeletons. This is only permitted for the purpose of delivering the products you make to the affiliated store and purchasing the products for your own use. This is a measure taken to protect the top of the city’s affiliation and because there may be problems due to this unprecedented method. How about running a trial run for a certain period of time and talking about it again after identifying the pros and cons?”

However, this did not completely permit transporting logistics using only skeletons. I don’t know if it was because of the record of the blacksmiths leaving me in an instant, but they said they would run it on a trial basis and figure out the pros and cons.

Just as Smith Skeleton’s franchise began operating and blacksmiths came to me for a living, it felt like they were worried about the side effects that would arise if they just granted my request.

I wanted to work in logistics because of the little memories I had from my past life, not because I wanted to take all the jobs from other people and take them all to myself. It was a condition that I could understand and accept, so I nodded willingly.

“That alone is enough.”

Aside from everything else, it was great that I didn’t have to move the items to be delivered to the Carbon branch every month. Since the one-way distance was close to ten days, most of the time was spent just traveling. In addition, it would be even better if the coal and charcoal purchased from Carbon could be moved to the place where the blast furnace is located unmanned.

Anyway, after finishing the discussion about logistics, I left Count Carbon’s mansion, leaving behind Count Carbon, who escorted me to the entrance of the mansion.

However, after leaving the mansion, they did not head straight to the village. At first, I planned to go straight to the village, but since I received the transaction money, I thought I would at least go shopping. A Skeleton Mage was also needed to enable unmanned logistics transfer, so it was essential to have the necessary materials to make a Skeleton Mage.

Even though it was developing, it was still a village, so there were many ingredients that were not easily available in our village. Unlike our village, most ingredients could be obtained without difficulty in Carbon, which is a large city in its own way.

“There are various herbs! We have everything from fresh herbs just picked by an herbalist to dried herbs that are ready to use!”

“We are selling artifacts from Afrang, the Kingdom of Magic! There are a variety of artifacts, including fire-starting artifacts!”

“Selling various types of wool! We also handle animal leather and monster leather!”

As I entered the commercial district a little further than the Smith Skeleton Carbon branch, people were very eager to solicit customers. There were all kinds of stores, and each one caught my eye.

“Wow, that bear skin is bigger than some kind of carriage?”

The bear skin hanging in the leather shop was so huge that I was sure it would have been bigger than a decent carriage if it had been alive. And, other than that, the items sold at various stores kept stopping me.

But since it wasn’t the stuff I needed, I didn’t bother to look and started looking for the things I needed.

And while I was looking for the things I needed, I was able to find a very rare material.

“Mandrake? No, do you have this? Even the condition is pretty good.”

“Oh, you know something! This is a recently collected mandrake.”

“It was collected recently?”

“Bandits were caught and executed around last year. It appears that there was a mandrake under the execution table at that time. It was recently discovered while repairing an execution platform and put up for auction, and I won the bid.”

Mandrake refers to a plant called Mandrake grown in a special way. An ordinary mandrake was a poisonous plant that caused mild hallucinations when ingested. When someone died around it and sprayed blood and semen, it absorbed the energy and became a mandrake, which is highly valuable as a magic ingredient. Moreover, it was slightly imbued with the energy of death, making it a more valuable black magic ingredient.

Naturally, such materials ignited my desire to buy and made me open the money bag containing the coins.

“The smaller one costs fifteen thousand meds, and the two next to it cost twenty-two thousand meds each.”

The store owner must have sensed my desire to buy, so he told me the price even though I didn’t ask. In the end, I bought a mandrake with three roots in an instant, and ended up holding a small box with three mandrake roots in my arms.

“Thank you for your purchase!”

“Oh, are there any black evening primroses?”

“Yes! We sometimes have people looking for it, so we stock it. However, it is completely dried. Are you okay?”

“Rather good.”

Then, after purchasing a few more ingredients from the place where I purchased the mandrake, I looked around other stores.

In our town, there are a lot of things that are not easy to find, so every time I pass by the stores, the number of things I am holding increases more and more. Thanks to this, I had no choice but to bring out the skeleton even if it caught people’s attention.

There were some people who seemed surprised by the sudden appearance of the skeleton, but there was no big commotion, although it may be because Smith Skeleton was in charge of the operation. In fact, there were people who recognized me and thought, “That person is the warlock who runs Smith Skeleton.”

Anyway, after leaving the pile of luggage to the skeleton, I bought more items with a lighter body. Various herbs, poisonous plants, and other ingredients that could be used as magic ingredients were piled up in the skeleton’s body. Boxes were sometimes inserted into round ribs, and items with hooks were even hung on the collarbone, making use of skeletons as carriers.

“Huh?”

However, as I was about to return to the village after purchasing various ingredients, there was a store that caught my eye.

It was a store that sold by-products of monsters, and strangely enough, there were a few intact corpses on display. Since it could be said to be the most important material for making a skeleton, I headed straight to that store.

“Hurry?! S, skeleton!”

The moment I entered the store, I could see the store owner looking very surprised at the skeleton coming in behind me. Still, the store owner seemed to calm down quickly, although it may have been due to the skeleton’s current state, which was not at all threatening because it was full of luggage.

“Welcome! Are you, by any chance, the warlock who runs Smith Skeleton over there?”

“It’s okay to say it’s an operation, but we’re giving them skeletons and stuff.”

As if he knew about Smith Skeleton, the store owner showed me a bit of caution and led me into the store.

He seemed briefly surprised by the skeleton, but now that he found out I was a warlock, he seemed to view me as a prospective customer. There was no one who used monster by-products as often as the warlock.

“What by-products are you looking for? Our store carries by-products of various monsters!”

“Now we are looking for an intact body.”

“We directly process carcasses and distribute by-products, so we also sell intact carcasses. I will guide you.”

The store owner guided me with a smile at the thought of selling an intact corpse. It was more profitable to sell the whole carcass than to sell only the by-products. Processing it as a by-product required no effort and no part was discarded as waste, so it was bound to be beneficial.

Anyway, as I followed the store owner, I arrived at an underground warehouse full of cold, where a special artifact was in operation to prevent the monster’s corpse from decaying.

“The monsters we have in our store mainly include goblins, kobolds, orcs, and slimes.”

There were still unprocessed monster corpses in the warehouse, but there were no particularly great monsters to be seen. When walking around outside, most of the monsters you encounter are often.

“Aside from regular monsters, are there any shaman entities?”

“Are you talking about a shaman entity? There is one.”

“… … There is?”

I asked lightly, out of curiosity, but I couldn’t hide my surprise when I heard that there was a shaman. And this time, he immediately took out a money bag full of coins.

Already, in order to transport logistics on a regular basis, a Skeleton Mage was needed to control the skeleton!

However, the store owner reacted somewhat ambiguously as he saw me taking out the money bag with great joy.

“Warlock. By any chance, are you looking for only intact corpses?”

“I’m looking for it for the purpose of making a skeleton, so I’m looking for it in as intact a condition as possible.”

Except for the bones, the rest of the body was quickly corrupted through a curse and could be used to strengthen the bones, so the more intact the corpse was, the higher the level of completeness of the skeleton was.

That’s why I couldn’t help but feel regret. The fact that the store owner said this meant that although there was a shaman, the body was not intact.

“There is a Goblin Shaman corpse, but both legs are missing. It seems that the mercenary who hunted the goblin shaman was skilled enough to cut him down with a single blow.”

As I expected, the store owner mentioned that one of the goblin shaman’s corpses was not intact.

While feeling deep regret and wondering if it would be better to ask mercenaries later, my thoughts suddenly changed. Since the goal was not to create a skeleton that would have to move the body like a miner or blacksmith, the lack of legs did not seem to be a big problem.

I thought it would be okay to just fix it on a cart or a skeleton horse and have other skeletons run it. Since it doesn’t have legs, its bones may be less strengthened, but considering it’s only purpose of being used for logistics transport, it wasn’t a problem.

In the end, I ended up using quite a bit of the transaction money I received from Count Carbon, purchasing corpses that I would not have even bothered to look at if they were ordinary individuals. Although the very heavy money bag became a little lighter, I felt very good because the cart was filled with black magic ingredients and skeleton mage ingredients.