Let’s talk money.
Current monthly income: over 5,000 gold coins. (Roughly fifty million yen.)
The artificial pearls coming online at ~1,000 coins a month was a big deal.
But the bulk still comes from the palm-top rabbits’ hunting. That hasn’t changed.
And their hunting is strip-mining a finite resource — the ceiling WILL arrive.
We need the books running positive without hunting income, and soon.
…Though the root problem remains the ordering skill’s war-crime exchange rate…
Either way, the conclusion is long since settled: whatever can be made in THIS world, we make here.
Soy sauce and miso prototypes are already underway, so that’s covered — which leaves the single most expensive seasoning line: curry powder.
Cornelia visits at a frequency suggesting she believes this is her house… and the pot now contains standing batch-cooked curry at all times.
Some mornings I walk into the living room and she’s already there — “Pardon the intrusion” — eating curry she served herself.
Hence the spice plot I’m currently growing in the field: raw material for homemade curry powder.
Fundamentally, curry-type dishes are just spices plus ingredients — after that it’s blending, science-experiment style.
Net Search plus a tolerance for trial and error, and it’s all solvable.
The biggest asset is that my own tongue remembers the finished target. With that, everything else is iteration.
Proper Japanese — well, British-style — curry roux is high-difficulty, granted. But approximate-Indian-style curry I’ve now made several times.
Household reviews: consistently strong.
And in the course of the curry project, a miscalculation occurred.
The kind of miscalculation that, for our budget-crisis household, might outclass the pearls entirely.
Because—
“Chili peppers — that’s THAT, ain’t it? Red powder, yeah?”
“No idea what ‘red powder’ is, but from the sound of it, probably.”
Arisa had come by to collect the rabbits’ materials, and we were having tea and small talk in the living room.
“Mind showin’ me the field a sec, Tatsuya-bro?”
“Sure, no problem.”
And so I walked Arisa out to the spice plot.
“Whoa… would ya look at this. A whole FIELD o’ spices, far as the eye can see.”
“We host a Demon Lord with a bottomless stomach, remember. And everyone here loves curry anyway.”
“An’ ya can harvest a steady quantity of this, regular-like?”
“Yeah — if I decide to, sure.”
At that, Arisa’s pupils turned into ¥-marks.
“Heeey, Tatsuya-bro?”
“What.”
“Let ME run this one. Please?”
“Meaning?”
“Ya DO know spices trade for their weight in gold, yeah?”
And there I sucked in a breath. “Ah—”
Of course. OF COURSE.
How did I never connect this?
In medieval Europe, spices were so expensive even nobles couldn’t use them freely.
Same story in this world.
The cause: they only grow in southern lands, and transport costs are lunatic.
But I have Seed Creation — and I can customize cultivars for COLD climates.
“You want to sell spices as a product line?”
Arisa nodded, and grinned wide.
“This ain’t even in the same GALAXY as the sugar. This is distribution-revolution territory — the commercial guild is gonna flip UPSIDE DOWN. Just climb aboard the luxury liner an’ leave it all to me!”
And she thumped her chest with a resounding DON.