The next day...
We were still hold up in the gaurds room while, gobta borrowed a other cell to sleep in, Having nothing to do I chatted with rimuru while watching some dwarven personnel run through morning training in the field behind the guardhouse.
Me and rimuru were discussing the their level of strength and how they'd fare against the assorted creature he had predated by this point.
Turned out, the guards barely stood a chance. Even if we gave rimuru a handicap, there were only just a few of them who could beat the bat and the lizard.
In a one-on-one matchup, the scales tipped pretty heavily toward the monsters, but since the dwarves always seemed to operate in teams of four to six, a few of the combined parties could take on the spider fairly well. Even all twenty of them out in the field couldn't take on the centipede, though. They were gaurds afterall not a special unit, so it is not bad for their level of strength.
They were just about wrapped up by the time Gobta awoke. The captain checked in at around the same time.
"All right," he said, "you're free to go. Sorry I kept you in here for so long—I was beholden to keep you overnight, at least. Apologies!"
"Oh, no, no. It saved me one night's hotel cost, at least." rimuru replied
"Glad you see it that way. Here, let me make it up to you. I can introduce you to a talented blacksmith I know!"
"That would be perfect. Thank you"
Things are moving forward, Finally We just got priority entry, and at least some money to our name, and the blacksmith that was referred to us.
In exchange for that…" The gaurd added.
"If you have any of those recovery potions left, would you be interested in letting go of them?"
They must really be short on them, That soldier mentioned that yesterday. Well there was probably a ton in the cave, and it would increase the amount of money we have.
"All right," Rimuru replied. "It'll depend on how many, though. I need to keep a few for myself, too."
"Any extras you're willing to part with are fine by me. Even if it's just one."
Looks like they are seriously lacking in potions, that or the ones that rimuru made was special.
"Okay, um, well, how about five, then?"
"Five! Ah, that'd be wonderful!"
"Sure. Oh, also, I'm pretty sure they'll still work even if you dilute them a little bit, all right? If it's just a regular slash wound, ten parts water to one part potion oughta do the trick."
The captain nodded eagerly, Settling the deal, Rimuru spat out five potions, and the gaurd responded by giving him a small pouch. Inside I could see a selection of gold coins. "I know it's not much," he explained, "but I hope you'll accept this. I'll give you five gold pieces for each one of these!"
Twenty-five gold, then? We still don't know of the value of money here. Better figure out how much that is, though, exactly.
After consulting with the gaurd about it, we wound up having a long conversation. before we set off, soon we was out of the guardhouse.
.
"Yo! You in there?!" shouted the captain-kaido as we entered a blacksmith shop.
After getting to know the captain whose name was kaido better, We were told that the owner of the shop, the one he wanted to introduce us to was his elder brother.
"Excuse us," We said as we followed Kaido in. The moment we entered, we felt several dubious gazes upon us.
"""Ah!!"""
The three miners who we had seen yesterday after being treated, exclaimed in surprise. They were looking healthy but for some reason making depressed faces...
Just behind them was The owner of the shop a grizzled, grouchy looking dwarf, Didn't look much like Kaido.
"Whadda you want? You know these guys?"
"Kaijin, this is it! The slime! The one who saved us…"
"Yeah! It sure is! And you're our boss's brother, aren't you, Captain?"
"...…"
"Oh-ho! The slime, you say? We were just talking about you! Thanks for getting these guys out of a bad way yesterday."
"Oh, no, it was nothing… Okay, it was something, but, ah, you know. Ha-ha-ha-ha!"
"So," the old guy said, rearing back a bit, "what brings you here today?"
We decided to go into full detail. We all piled into seats situated deeper inside, and Kaido was kind enough to provide a quick recap. We added a few choice details, and things moved along at a good pace.
"All right," the old guy answered. "I understand. But what do you want? I can't do anything for you. I've got a job from a certain country I gotta deal with, too. None of this leaves the room, but…"
Then it was his turn to talk, deliberately leaving out some of the finer details, as it was all classified. Basically, a number of countries were sending out orders for weapons and armor, spooked that a certain "idiot nation" might be trying to hatch a war on them all. It connected to why the guard was out of medicine yesterday, as well as the lack of raw materials plaguing the shops.
"So," he continued, tapping at his head, "I managed to pull an all-nighter to get an order for two hundred steel spears squared away…but I gotta come up with twenty swords, too, and I ain't even got one yet. There's just no material!"
"Why don't you just say you can't fill the order?" Kaido asked.
"Fool! You think I didn't, at first? But that damned minister Vester told me, 'So you're saying the great Kaijin, renowned across the entire kingdom, can't even fill a simple order like this one? Is that it?' In front of the king himself, no less! Can you believe that damned idiot?!"
Long story short, The four of them have conflict with an official, who pressured kaido in accepting an massive order.
So is this guy maybe buying up all the kingdom's raw materials so the shops can't sell anything? It sounds plausible to me.
"What's the difference between making lances and swords?" rimuru asked.
"I need special ore for the swords," the old guy spat out. "Magic ore. The spears are just simple steel spikes."
Without the right materials to work with, even a master artisan is merely a man. It must have been incredibly frustrating. The minister must've been wanted to ruin his reputation.
"And that's not the half of it. It takes a full day to complete even one of those swords. Even if I built an assembly line and streamlined everything I could, it'd still take me two weeks to make twenty…"
Looks like the deadline is not that far I could read the answer in his face anyway.
"I have until the end of this week." He groaned. "First thing next week, I'm charged with delivering them to the king. It's a task for the kingdom, and every shop has been asked to do the same. If I can't, they could strip my artisan's license from me…"
So five days left and he won't make it in time… Well, maybe we should find a other one.
And as I was thinking that, I remembered did he say "magic ore"? rimuru have some of that, doesn't he? Those glowing stones in the cave…
And as we were talking, everyone was looking at rimuru, I don't know why but they thought he would spit out a solution, like what he did with the potions.