The next morning, while eating the breakfast brought to my room, I learned that Lord Rosenberg had departed at sunrise. I had delivered all 1,200 of the protective charms I finished the previous night, so I could only hope they would prove useful.
That aside, I wondered when my instruction in curse magic would actually begin. I hadn't been able to bring it up after seeing the state he was in yesterday, but I had many things I wanted to discuss—starting with a review of the miasma removal technique, which differed from the Hand of Kesho I had prepared in the Sea of Trees.
"In that case, I shall pass word along to him when the opportunity arises," Arone said as she served me. "Lord Rosenberg has duties for this house as well, so he should return here eventually regardless of the situation there. Even if he finds himself unable to leave, I am certain he will send word."
"Thank you. It isn't an urgent matter on my end, so please make the arrangements in a way that doesn't place a burden on him."
After making the request of Arone, I finished the rest of my breakfast without any lingering worries.
Once I had enjoyed every dish, my work as a technician awaited me. I met up with Yudam, and Arone guided us to the magic training ground inside the ducal residence. This was the same place I had used previously for my sugar scrub experiments. As always, the purple paint coating the walls was as gaudy as ever, but today the room was filled with things that hadn't been there before: axes, shelves for drying firewood, and several massive piles of tree branches.
"Thank you very much for preparing all of this," I said.
"Since we are also able to secure a large amount of winter provisions this way, this level of cooperation is only natural," Arone replied.
"I’ll make sure to fill this place with firewood to meet your expectations."
I summoned the goblins from my Dimension Home, and they emerged carrying the tree trunks I had collected the day before. Since I had already finished the limbing and bucking during the storage stage, the goblins carried them in pairs, while the stronger hobgoblins carried two logs at a time. They piled the timber in a corner of the training ground.
Another group began splitting the wood into appropriate sizes using the axes provided by the Ducal House. Firewood began to accumulate in large quantities. The hobgoblins swung the axes while the goblins gathered the split wood; the division of labor was perfect.
Furthermore, I had the slimes form a makeshift conveyor belt to funnel the wood toward the drying shelves. Thanks to the human-wave tactics and the smooth workflow of the goblins and slimes, the empty shelves were filled in no time.
"Now then, I should handle this side as well..."
This time, I summoned sand slimes from my Dimension Home and used slime magic to create a Sand Vortex, pulverizing the piles of branches one after another. These would be collected as a mixture of wood powder and sand slime, then dried while in storage.
Sand slimes possessed both the moisture-absorbing properties of sand and the quick-drying nature required to maintain their silky bodies. By utilizing these traits, I could accelerate the drying of the wood powder at the same time the branches were pulverized. After drying, I could manipulate the sand slimes to separate them from the wood powder, making it easy to secure materials for Ogalite.
"Even so, you really prepared a lot of branches for me," I noted.
"They are merely branches produced during the maintenance of the gardens, so it was no special effort," Arone explained. "We plan to periodically prune the trees in the woods out back from now on as well, so please take as much as you like. After all, without the actual goods, our attempts to ease the people's anxiety would lack persuasiveness."
It was exactly as Arone said. The purpose of this material procurement was to create samples to raise awareness of Ogalite and to build up stock so we could respond if demand arose before formal production began. Since I had received official permission from the Ducal House to disclose the information, I would likely be building a formal mass-production system from here on while consulting with the Commerce Guild and the townspeople with samples in hand.
The firewood price hike countermeasures had only just begun. Renewing my resolve, I sent the mounds of powdered branches into my Dimension Home along with the sand slimes. By the time I finished collecting the last pile, the firewood shelves were about half-filled thanks to the goblins.
"This is a good pace," Yudam remarked. "Shall we start from this end?"
"Be careful," I said. "Thoroughly extracting the water requires a lot of mana. You don't have to finish it all in one go, so let's do a light pass first."
"Understood. Here goes—Exudation."
Normally, firewood needs to be seasoned for several months to half a year, or even several years depending on the type of wood. However, I decided to shorten that period by squeezing out the moisture using the wood magic Yudam had taught me. There was still time before winter truly set in, but I wanted it to be ready for immediate use if necessary.
Since there was a large volume of wood, I released my mana all at once, targeting the shelves as a whole. I visualized the conduits that transported moisture and imagined the water flowing out from the cut ends; as I did, water actually seeped from the wood and soaked the ground.
Having practiced a bit the day before, I succeeded without difficulty. I tirelessly cast the spell on the firewood shelves as they were filled by the assembly-line work. By the time noon rolled around, the wood processing was finished, and I was able to take a break with a pleasant sense of fatigue.
In the afternoon, after having a delicious lunch at the residence, I headed to the Moulton Slave Company. When I was shown into the same reception room as before, a man wearing an eyepatch over his left eye was waiting along with Oresto.
"Thank you for seeing me again today," I said.
"The pleasure is mine. Let us conduct some good business," Oresto replied. "To get straight to the point, this is Marlo, the former slave merchant I mentioned."
"My name is Marlo," the man said.
As I thought, he was the one who would be serving as the manager of my rope production factory. Although his clothes and hair were neatly arranged and he had a clean appearance, he looked much older than the sixty-three years listed on his documents. The dull white of his hair and the deep wrinkles on his hands and face made him seem quite aged.
"I am Ryoma Takebayashi. I look forward to working with you."
"My, you are very polite... I thank you from the bottom of my heart for entrusting a meaningful job to an old man like me. I swear upon all the strength and experience I have left that I will fulfill my duties in supervising the slaves."
Marlo bowed so deeply that I could see nothing but his balding crown. I could feel his sincerity and enthusiasm, but I wondered why he was going to such lengths.
"Lord Ryoma, this proposal was a welcome one not just for us, but for this man as well," Oresto explained. "As I mentioned the other day, Marlo gave everything up because he feared his age would interfere with his work as a business owner. To put it another way, he wished to continue as a merchant as long as his aging did not prevent it. Since what he had once abandoned—his work and his shop—has returned to him, it is only natural he would show such gratitude."
"It is just as Chairman Oresto says," Marlo added. "I loved and took pride in my work as a slave merchant, and I still do, even now that I have become a slave myself."
"I see... I had heard that Marlo was a serious person, but I get the impression he is overflowing with even more passion than that. If you don't mind, what kind of management did you practice during your active years? I only ask out of curiosity, so you don't have to answer if you'd rather not."
"No, please, let me tell you," Marlo said. "I believed I should speak of it beforehand."
His expression shifted from gratitude to tension as he quietly explained that he had primarily handled children. However, hearing that, what came to my mind was not disgust, but a question. If my memory served me—
"...It seems Lord Takebayashi is familiar with the treatment of children under the slave law," Marlo observed.
"Can you tell?"
"Of course. Hearing that someone buys and sells children without any prior knowledge usually elicits indignation or discomfort. However, you did not knit your brows or attempt to leave; instead, you looked at me as if asking for the rest of the story. I could not fail to notice."
"It's true that I might have reacted that way if I had heard it without knowing anything," I admitted.
To be fair, my knowledge was only based on the pamphlet I had received when I first sought help from the Moulton Slave Company and what I had heard during my dinner with Oresto. I hadn't studied it properly, so I couldn't be proud of it. However, the regulations regarding child slaves were quite strict and had caught my attention.
"If I recall, the trade of children is generally prohibited until they reach the age of sixteen," I said. "A slave merchant is allowed to purchase them, but a sale is permitted only to another merchant in cases where there are extremely grave and unavoidable reasons.
"Even if you acquire them, you absolutely cannot sell them until they are sixteen. However, you must look after them until then. Failing to provide sufficient food, clothing, and shelter is illegal, and there is no guarantee they will sell for a profit once they reach the proper age. To sell them at a high price, you need to provide education, which incurs its own costs. On top of that, once purchased, you cannot abandon them regardless of the burden they become. If the shop's management becomes impossible, your only option is to sell them to someone else.
"From a strictly business perspective, they are essentially toxic assets, aren't they?"
"Any decent merchant would try to avoid them as much as possible," Oresto chimed in. "Especially in small-scale shops, it is common to refuse a purchase. I have heard stories of merchants being unable to refuse a plea from a starving mother... but even then, it would be one or two children a year at most. And yet, this man handled over eight00 children over the course of forty years."
"Eight hundred?!" I exclaimed.
A simple calculation meant twenty per year. Some were likely young, while others would have reached a salable age soon, but still—this man had looked after that many children? He was more like an orphanage director than a slave merchant. He did eventually sell them, but...
"To be frank, why did you go that far?" I asked. "It's easy to put into words, but raising children is no easy task, even if it's just one."
"I certainly struggled, but it happened naturally as I did my work," Marlo replied. He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "First of all, before I became a merchant, I was a slave myself. I was sold when I was very young, and I do not even know the faces of my birth parents. The person who raised me was the master of the slave company I belonged to."
His life as a slave was neither particularly good nor bad, but the master provided as much education as possible, claiming it was so he could sell them for a high price. Thanks to that, Marlo gained the knowledge to manage a business.
"I was a child who was slow to learn... it took me five times as long as the others to finally catch up. Even when I turned sixteen, I was so clumsy that I remained unsold for the longest time. I worked as an underling solely out of a desire to repay the master who never gave up on me.
"The master was a foul-mouthed man, but he was kind to children. Whenever he drank, he would grumble about how the life of a brat brought to a place like that was never good, whether the parents were poor or just terrible people. He’d say that turning them away was easy, but it also meant letting the brat in front of you continue that kind of life.
"It was a business for us, and if we overextended and collapsed, it would only make the children suffer. We had to strictly determine the limits while letting as many children as possible lead a minimum standard of life. I came to believe that was the master's management philosophy and his pride. I wanted to uphold that."
"And so, you inherited the shop," I said.
"The shop was inherited from the master when he retired. My knowledge and education came from him. Thus, I decided to inherit everything, including his philosophy."
It seemed Marlo really did this because he truly cared. He was an incredibly virtuous person in a difficult industry.
"Do you understand now?" Oresto asked. "He is the complete opposite of the image most people have of a slave merchant; he is a man of good character."
"I understand so well that I feel almost ashamed for asking if he was someone without issues," I replied.
"Since there are merchants who take profits while ignoring the law, that is only natural," Marlo said, offering a small smile.
"Now that I've learned of your passion and your history, Marlo, I can better understand your attitude," I said. "I don't think I can understand all of your suffering, but it must have been painful to give up your shop."
"I was prepared to dedicate my life to it, but slave merchants have many enemies," Marlo admitted.
He explained that being cursed at in front of the shop was a daily occurrence. Sometimes he was punched in the street. Even if he reported it, the guards would only make snide remarks about his "dirty business." Customers would assume he was doing something shady and try to haggle threateningly, and sometimes a mother who had sold her child would return to turn violent in a desperate attempt to take the child back.
"This eye was gouged out by a knife a mother had hidden back when I was still young and inexperienced," Marlo said, gesturing to his patch. "She had pleaded with me, saying she had spent the money on survival and couldn't pay it back but would eventually do so. Since there was no sign of her becoming violent, I let my guard down."
"It's more cutthroat than I imagined..."
"It certainly isn't a popular profession," Oresto said. "But it depends on the scale of the company. Our firm chooses its customers, and we have connections with the nobility and abundant financial power."
In other words, Marlo was targeted because he was a vulnerable opponent. It was human nature, but a depressing story nonetheless. People who held back their frustrations when facing a strong opponent would often let them all out on someone who seemed like a safe target.
"Is that why you entrusted the shop to Oresto?" I asked.
"Yes. I did not know how much longer I could protect the shop and the children with this aging body. To obsess over continuing but being unable to do a satisfactory job would be to put the cart before the horse. I thought it best to have the shop absorbed so the children could be placed under the protection of a large firm."
"And the reason you became a slave yourself was..."
"I trust Chairman Oresto, but I am still concerned about the children," Marlo confessed. "At my age, finding a new way of life is a struggle. If I am to live aimlessly until I die alone, I would rather become a slave and witness the growth of the remaining children."
He had even put the money from selling himself and his shop toward their living expenses so they could be liberated more easily in the future.
"I am simply filled with admiration," I said. "That is precisely why I want you to be the manager of the factory. I look forward to working with you."
"Yes, please leave it to me."
With the meeting finished, we conducted a detailed briefing regarding the business operations and then inspected the former storefront that would become the factory. Three young slaves had already begun preparations there, and I exchanged greetings with them as well. It turned out they were all children who had volunteered because they wanted to support Marlo. Their relationship was clearly built on firm, mutual trust.
I’ll do my best so that this work leads to a good future for them as well.