A few days had passed since the snow barbecue party. As expected, everyone who had attended and tasted the Silver Lion meat left fully satisfied.
Naturally, though, that night, the next day—and for some, even longer—they found themselves unable to feel satisfied by ordinary food.
They endured those days, but eventually, as time passed, the lingering aftertaste of the Silver Lion meat faded away.
Right around the time everyone was settling back into their daily routines, Rei found himself summoned by Mayo for reasons he couldn't quite fathom.
"Sorry to call you out like this, Rei-san."
"No, I don't mind. I was planning to stop by soon anyway. Still, haven't you lost some weight compared to before?"
"Hahaha... well, something came up."
Mayo offered a hollow laugh and tried to brush the question aside.
Mayo had been a large man—roughly 180 centimeters tall and weighing around 100 kilograms—but to Rei's eyes, his frame seemed slightly narrower than before, and his face looked a touch thinner.
"When you say 'something came up'... you didn't even show up to the party the other day. Are you really alright?"
"You're right. Honestly, things aren't looking very good."
"Your firm was pretty large, as I recall. Is it really a situation that can't be managed?"
"Yes, well... being large is exactly why there are so many complications."
Mayo wiped sweat from his brow and let out a sigh, despite the snow falling outside. He may have been prone to sweating, but more than that, it was fair to say the situation with his firm was wearing him down considerably.
"So, with all these complications going on, Mayo coming all the way to see me must mean there's a reason, right?"
"...It's embarrassing to admit, but you're the only one who can save our firm from the crisis it's in right now, Rei-san."
"Me? Why does my name come up?"
It was true that Rei had been working hard alongside Mayo to make goblin meat palatable, but it wasn't as though he was providing any assistance to Mayo's firm—more precisely, the firm run by Mayo's father. Why his own name would come up here was something Rei couldn't understand.
"The Spiel Firm. Does that name ring a bell?"
"...The Spiel Firm?"
Rei tilted his head at the name Mayo offered. It was familiar, somehow.
"Along with the name Viscount Linus Marnino."
"Hm? That's..."
Rei recalled the face of the man whose name he'd been given at the Guard Station a short while earlier—the man who had pushed an unreasonable request on him, then borne a grudge when Rei refused and attacked Rei's party as they rode in Elena's carriage.
And he had heard the name Spiel Firm before, too. A merchant named Tris had approached Rei wanting to purchase the Silver Lion materials.
The sheer number of merchants who had come to Rei was considerable, but among all of them, the reason he remembered Tris—and the Spiel Firm—was because Tris had been different from the rest.
The other merchants had made contact the instant they learned Rei had cleared the Dungeon and returned to Gilm. Tris, however, had waited until the flood of merchants approaching Rei had settled down.
If the goal was simply to buy Silver Lion materials, it was clearly a poor strategy. But in terms of leaving a lasting impression on Rei, it had worked perfectly. In fact, Rei hadn't remembered the faces of nearly any of the merchants who had approached him in droves, but he distinctly remembered Tris.
Of course, the fact that Tris was quite different from the other merchants probably played a role. A merchant whose mouth smiled but whose eyes didn't was someone Rei couldn't help but pay attention to. That was why the memory had stayed with him so strongly.
But why did both of those names come up here? Rei found himself wondering.
"How exactly do those two connect? And to your firm, no less?"
"First of all, the relationship between the Viscount Marnino Family and the Spiel Firm is, simply put, that of borrower and lender."
"...Borrowing money?"
Rei recalled the Marnino viscount's residence he had been summoned to—not the main estate, but what you'd call a vacation home or secondary residence. It certainly didn't look like a household burdened by debt.
"Viscount Marnino apparently carried out large-scale flood control works in his domain. During that time, he borrowed a substantial sum from the Spiel Firm."
"I see. I've heard that kind of work costs a fortune."
"Yes. But if it succeeds, even land that was previously unsuitable for farming becomes arable, and income rises."
"So that was the aim."
When Mayo said flood control, Rei had assumed it meant dealing with areas prone to river flooding. Apparently, his guess had been off.
"No, I believe managing flooding was one of the goals as well. It seems there were multiple purposes mixed together, which is partly why the project became so large-scale. But when you combine both objectives, naturally the costs increase."
"...I see."
That alone was enough for Rei to roughly grasp what Mayo was driving at. The inflated costs had likely increased the amount borrowed from the Spiel Firm even further.
But if that's the case, what was that request back then all about? He said it was the kind of request I absolutely couldn't refuse once I heard it. If they were short on money, was he going to tell me to raid a bandit hideout and hand over the treasure?
Rei thought this and found himself nodding inwardly.
Rei had come to be called the Bandit Eater by bandits. Naturally, he could fight them with an overwhelming advantage. Of course, subjugating bandits was something of a near-hobby for him—though it was quite profitable as well.
Many people might frown upon bandit hunting, but for Rei, his pockets grew warmer, bandit-related damage decreased in the surrounding area, and depending on the situation, selling captured bandits to slave merchants gave those merchants merchandise to stock. It wasn't two birds with one stone—it was closer to three.
To request someone like himself to go after bandits felt somewhat pointless. That was what Rei thought.
Besides, what was his name... Viscount Marnino? He was said to be part of the King's Faction. Then why would he—the head of the family himself, no less—come all the way to the frontier city of Gilm, especially at that time of year when winter was approaching?
Just because Rei was called the Bandit Eater didn't mean no one else could defeat bandits. On the contrary, bandits who were a threat to ordinary people weren't particularly difficult opponents for adventurers. Of course there were exceptions like the Prairie Wolves, but exceptions were called exceptions precisely because they were few in number.
Rei simply couldn't believe that a noble of the King's Faction—let alone the head of the family—would travel to the stronghold of the opposing Neutral Faction just to commission bandit hunting.
If there's anything else I can think of...
Rei cast about for an answer, then recalled his own ability—specifically, the Terrain Manipulation skill of his Death Scythe.
The ability to freely manipulate the ground would likely be extremely useful in flood control work. Rei could only control about one meter with Terrain Manipulation. But being able to freely reshape the ground, even if only by a meter, would undoubtedly save a significant amount of labor in flood control projects. If so, it was certain the work would progress considerably faster.
But he said that once I heard the details, I wouldn't be able to refuse... If it were flood control, he wouldn't have said something like that, would he?
Even if he heard the details of a flood control request and then turned it down, there shouldn't have been any particular problem. Of course, if asked whether he would have accepted after hearing those details, Rei would have said no. At the time, he had been desperately searching for a way to restore Vihera's consciousness. A commitment of a day or two would have been one thing, but accepting a flood control commission could mean one month, two months—or worse, half a year, a full year, even two. Rei simply didn't have the leeway to take on such a request.
Besides, the reason I can manipulate one meter with Terrain Manipulation is because I cleared the Dungeon and destroyed the Dungeon's core. So even if I had accepted the flood control request back then, it wouldn't have necessarily worked out.
It was unclear how much the other party understood about Rei's Terrain Manipulation, but it wasn't impossible that they had judged it would be at least somewhat useful for flood control.
"...Anyway. I understand the relationship between the Viscount Marnino Family and the Spiel Firm, but how does your firm come into this?"
"Actually, the Spiel Firm is currently making moves to—'invade' might be a slight exaggeration—they're trying to absorb our firm or bring it under their umbrella."
"Why would they do something like that?"
From Rei's perspective, the motive was a mystery.
"There are several reasons. The biggest is probably that our firm is firmly rooted in Gilm. Having been based here for many years, we have advantages in many aspects when it comes to doing business in the city."
"But since Tris came to see me, the Spiel Firm is already operating in Gilm, right? Then I don't think there's any need to go that far."
Mayo shook his head at Rei's murmur. As he did, Rei caught sight of the flesh on his cheeks jiggling—but he was probably worn down by the whole situation. Compared to when they had been researching goblin meat together, the jiggling seemed less pronounced.
Well, from a health standpoint, losing weight is definitely a good thing, though.
Rei worried about Mayo's health as he observed the somewhat overweight man, but Mayo, completely unaware of how he was being perceived, pressed on.
"Between us, who are based in Gilm, and the Spiel Firm, who come here to purchase goods, there's inevitably a gap."
"Is it really like that?"
Living as an adventurer, Rei naturally wasn't well-versed in the world of merchants. He'd had a conflict with the Azoth Firm, but that had been a dispute between a merchant and an adventurer, not between merchants. He frequented shops, but that was the extent of it.
No, before the war with the Bestia Empire, there was that one time I was hired as an escort. But even that was ultimately just an escorting relationship.
Thinking along those lines, he recalled the female adventurers he had worked alongside as escorts on that occasion. He had been invited to join their party but had ultimately declined, and he hadn't seen them at all since then. Completely oblivious, Rei hadn't the slightest inkling that one of those female adventurers had developed feelings for him.
"You're an adventurer, Rei-san, so I understand you're not very familiar with merchants. In any case, my firm—more precisely, my father's firm—is currently in the midst of a fierce struggle with the Spiel Firm. Though I mean in terms of business, not violence."
"I see. If it were violence, or physical force and whatnot, I could have helped."
"If only that were the case, it would have been a relief for us as well."
Mayo offered a wry smile at Rei's words.
In reality, the Spiel Firm was surely acting with full awareness that Mayo had a connection to Rei. As Mayo had said, when it came to conflicts between firms, the use of physical force was extremely rare. But "extremely rare" didn't mean "never." Hiring thugs to take action after quietly making preparations wasn't unheard of—it wouldn't have been strange at all.
Yet as far as this particular disturbance went, nothing of the sort had occurred. Mayo surmised that this was proof the Spiel Firm knew of the connection between Rei and Mayo, and didn't want Rei to intervene—or worse, make an enemy of him.
Of course, the fact that Mayo was now informing Rei about the Spiel Firm's aggression, thereby trying to sour Rei's impression of them, showed that Mayo was quite shrewd in his own merchant-like way.
"In any case, it's because of these circumstances that the goblin meat research has barely progressed. I'm sorry."
"No, don't worry about it. If you're dealing with that kind of situation, it can't be helped. I've been fairly busy with various things on my end lately too."
Whether Rei understood Mayo's ulterior motives or not, he delivered those words all the same.