Twenty-four hours by kei truck.
Rotating drivers between me, Arisa, Ouroboros, and Atomu-kun — we reached the port town.
Maria, being a certified speed demon, was banned from the wheel.
The cab got boring en route, so—
“Stop the wipers~!”
“Heeelp~!”
“To think a veteran palm-top rabbit would fall to such a device… gwahh~!”
—a game swept the truck wherein the rabbits clung to the windshield and got batted away by the wipers.
Ten of them plastered across the glass, all swept off in one wiper pass — a genuinely majestic sight.
Though when ATOMU-KUN took a turn driving—
“What’s the NEW GUY think he’s doin’, huh?!”
“Oh-ho, so yer READY to be minced into namasu, are ya?!”
“GET ‘IM, boys!”
“BOSS?! Why is it only when I— GWAAAH!”
—and thus Atomu-kun experienced mortal peril, but we arrived at the port town safely (mostly).
This expedition’s roster:
・Me
・Sonya’s army
・Ouroboros
・Katia
・Arisa
・Maria
・Atomu-kun
・Cornelia
That’s the full manifest.
Atomu-kun’s inclusion owes to the intel that Cornelia and Katia were bringing swimsuits — his application read, verbatim: “I will complete ANY errand you name, so PLEASE!”
First stop: the port town’s commercial guild.
“So what’s this overnight-dried-squid business actually about?”
“Remember how we made the king swallow all them outrageous demands — tax rates, contraband exemptions, exclusive routes?”
“So I heard, yes.”
“Point is, our company is now SO grotesquely privileged that — probably — us just tradin’ ordinary goods normally would bankrupt every rival company within a few years.”
She really did extract something monstrous.
I’ve decided not to ask for further details. For my own health.
“Not that it matters — when they fold, we absorb their staff anyway.”
“The SQUID, Arisa.”
“So the king says privileges THIS extreme are diplomatically indefensible. He wants a fig leaf — some official pretext, any pretext.”
“A pretext?”
“Dress it up as a REWARD — heroes’ honors, granted for great deeds. That’s the request.”
“Ahh, I see. ‘We caved to Demon Lord pressure and kneecapped our own merchant class’ is not a story a king can tell out loud…”
“Exactly that. Mind, even WITH the pretext my privilege package don’t really add up — but havin’ a story an’ havin’ none are worlds apart.”
The fox that borrows the tiger’s authority… the idiom could have been coined for this exact situation.
She weaponized Cornelia as a strategic deterrent and intimidated a sitting king into borderline treason against his own economy.
“So what are WE supposed to do?”
“Kraken extermination.”
“Ah. Hence the dried squid. Details?”
“This port was a shippin’ hub, historically. But lately there’s been a kraken population explosion, an’ the sea lane’s stopped functionin’ entirely.”
“About what I guessed, yeah.”
“The other cause is scurvy. Long-haul disease — made sailors near impossible to recruit. Double punch, an’ the shippin’ company that runs this lane is one breath from bankruptcy… an’ the kingdom’s desperate.”
“Scurvy, you say…?”
Now THAT has the distinct smell of money.
“An’ the reason we specifically begged Cornelia-chan to come along is…”
“Total kraken cleanup, presumably.”
“Bingo! For OUR crew, krakens are a rounding error, yeah?”
“True enough — oi, Arisa? How much of your company’s money can you move on short notice?”
“With the Adventurer King’s after-the-fact sign-off… ten thousand gold. With advance approval, fifty thousand — that’s our hard cash ceiling.”
And our channel-construction fund sits at ten thousand gold…
“Without the scurvy and the krakens, this lane prints money. Correct?”
“That’s the shape of it.”
“How much to rescue the bankrupt shipping company?”
“Twenty thousand gold, thereabouts. Their debts run about a hundred thousand — we’d be assuming those too, mind.”
Bingo.
I nodded, grinning.
“Alright — we’re buying the shipping company. The WHOLE thing. Split the investment fifty-fifty, us and your company.”
“Come again?!”