Dream Life Vol 3 Chapter 24.2: “The Grand Banquet: Part 2”

“Everyone! Please take a look!” (Zack)

　I said, picking up a glass vessel and lifting it to eye level.

　When everyone’s eyes were on me, I slowly turned the palm of my hand with the glass vessel.

　Someone yells “Ah!” and the glass falls to the ground.

　With a cracking sound, the glass shatters into several pieces. At that moment, a sigh escape from those around me.

　People around me were looking at me like I was doing something, but I didn’t say anything, just picked up the shards of glass and shouted, “Watch!”, once again attracting the attention of the people around me.

　Holding up the shards on my left hand,

“Look carefully. It can be easily fixed with magic.” (Zack)

　I cast a spell of [Forming – Molding] an earth magic.

“O Remus, God of Earth, builder of all earth. Shape as thy will, as the origin from which they are made. I offer the power of mine life as payment. Give it form, Molding!” (Zack)

　A white light emanates from the broken glass, and when the light subsides, a glass of the same shape appears. I hold it high,

“It’s okay to break it! Please use it without worry!” (Zack)

　The dwarves were surprised by my words and looked at each other. Mr. Degenhardt looked astonished and muttered, “You’re truly an insane magician…”

“I forgot to mention that you will be taking that glass home as a souvenir!” (Zack)

　This startled the dwarves even more, but Degenhardt replied, “You’re a who makes all things possible, aren’t you? Then I shall gratefully receive it,” smiling to control their agitation.

　Then, with a small nod to me,

“Then, let taste that drink.” (Degenhardt)

　That’s what he said as he accepted the glass.

　I started making drinking glass in earnest last October when I learned to use [Inventory]. Until then, I could not make a large number of drinking glass due to lack of storage space, but since I learned the [Inventory], which allows me to store any number of drinking glass and prevents them from breaking, I began to make a large number of drinking glass.

　The first step in making drinking glass was to secure the raw materials. The raw material, silicon, is an element that exists in abundance in the ground, but because my image of silicon is quartz, I was unable to create an image of how to successfully extract it. If I tried to extract it by forcing magic power into it, I could create beautiful quartz crystals, but I could not make a good drinking glass using them as raw materials.

　Therefore, I decided to secure raw materials in a certain way.

　The idea was to have the Doctus Merchant Guild put up a sign stating that they would buy the broken glass products.

　Most glass products are produced in Primus, the imperial capital of southern Caelum, or around Pax Lumen, the capital of the Holy Kingdom of Lux.

　To transport glass products to the kingdoms of Lacus and Saltus in the north and Caum in the east, they go to Aurella by sea, then overland from there, and are transported to each country via the Aurella Road. For this reason, they always passed through Doctus, the midpoint of the Aurella Road.

　Glass products are extremely fragile, but the horse-drawn wagons that are the means of overland transportation in this world vibrate greatly. Although barley straw and other materials are laid down as cushioning material, a number of products still break.

　In this world, as in my original world, if a glass product breaks or chips, its value is reduced to almost zero. Merchants seeking profit do not see any value in broken glass products, and all of them are discarded.

　Then they received information that I was going to buy them. Rather than throwing them away, they came to me to sell them, hoping to make a little extra income.

　Even so, the amount of glass and glass ornaments per piece was not much. If I had only made drinking glass, there would have been no problem, but when I thought about making other glassware, it was difficult to secure a sufficient quantity. However, there was one organization that could supply us with a considerable amount.

　That was Light God Church.

　Their temples–called Churches in Light God Church–use a lot of stained glass.

　After being expelled from the Caum Kingdom several years ago, the Kingdom of Lacus has become a major destination for missionary work, and there is apparently a rush to build temples in Lacus.

　Then, the stained glass is produced in Lux and transported to the northern Kingdom Lacus. However, whether due to quality issues or transportation issues, a considerable amount of the stained glass ends up breaking during transportation.

　According to the merchants, it was inevitable that the stained glass was broken because of the unreasonable demands of the clergy of the Light God Church, such as forcing them to accelerate the delivery date and to increase the transportation volume per unit.

　However, there was other information regarding this.

　If the local Light God Church personnel found even the slightest blemish, they refused to accept the shipment. In addition, a penalty was imposed if the specified number was not reached, and conversely, if they tried to deliver more, they were often either refused or undercut.

　The merchants were not happy. If they did not deliver exactly the specified number of items, they would decrease their profits.

　Therefore, the merchants tried to make it look like they were transporting the goods on behalf of the Light God Church, rather than buying and transporting the goods themselves. Furthermore, assuming that a certain percentage of the goods would be damaged in transit, they negotiated with the head office of the God of Light Church to ship more goods in anticipation of that percentage and to deliver more than the stipulated number of goods.

　Ingeniously, the merchants approached the Light God Church officials directly. Construction was being delayed by broken glass, but those in charge were not making any progress. They complained.

　In fact, the construction delays were becoming noticeable at the time, and the higher ups, bogged down bureaucracy, were in a hurry to take the merchants’ word for it.

　As a result, the amount of glass distributed along the Aurella Road increased.

　The merchants no longer needed to be concerned about the quantity of glass they were contractually obligated to deliver to the local market by the delivery date. Furthermore, there were no bonuses for transporting more glass than was stipulated, so some people disposed of it as if it had been chipped.

　However, there was little demand for colorful stained glass other than from the Light God Church, and when it came to completely broken glass, it had to be discarded.

　Then word spread that there were people willing to buy broken glass. They were willing to buy anything, even if it was colored, which was a godsend to them.

　For the merchants, it was better to have a stable buyer at a low price than to be saddled with products they could hardly sell. Moreover, they could sell defective products that would otherwise have to be disposed of and turn them into profit.

　Therefore, many people began to think that they should sell their products to me, whether they were cracked or not. In this case, they thought that if they could secure the delivery quantity, it would not matter even if some of them were broken, and they would transport them more roughly than before. This led to an increase in the defect rate, and the amount of glass shipped from Lux increased.

　With the merchants’ intentions in mind, it was easier than expected to collect glass materials.

　Normally, the only way to turn the collected raw materials into glass would be to melt them in a furnace, but in my case, I had a strong ally with [Molding], the earth magic I had just used and demonstrated.

　As long as I had the raw materials, the rest was relatively easy. I could make glass relatively easily by changing the shape of the glass as if it was molten.

　Of course, even though it was relatively easy, it consumed a lot of magic power compared to the normal method of glass blowing.

　In the case of drinking glasses, the limit is 10 glasses per day.

　The amount of magic MP consumed per glass is five percent of my total MP. Of course, if I did nothing during the day, I could make more than twice as many glasses, but since I often used my magical energy during the daytime, such as hunting monsters and helping Professor Ruspede, I could only make a few drinking glasses per day.

　With the dwarves lined up in front of me, I poured scotch, marl, and apple brandy into glasses. Then, holding them up one by one so they could see them from behind,

“If possible, please drink the scotch, the marl, and the apple brandy in that order. That way you will get the aroma and taste. After that, you are free to drink whatever you like.” (Zack)

　Leaving Enos and the others in charge, I took the liquors and went to the Frontier Count.