Chapter 3: Starting the Year Properly
—January Record of This Year—
Flashback
“Happy New Year, Cecilia-san. I’m counting on you again this year.”
“Happy New Year, Land-san. I look forward to working with you as well.”
“Sorry to start things off so suddenly, but I ended up with some extra monster materials from something I hunted at the end of the year. If possible, could you buy them?”
“You’d like to sell materials, correct? Then please follow me to the warehouse.”
—Warehouse—
“I’ll inspect them now, so please take out the materials here.”
“Sure. First, there’s the lumber from the Ancient Treant King, Elder Trent King (S-rank), and…”
“Huh?”
“And the hide of a Greater Wyvern (S-rank).”
“Wha?”
“I’m sorry there are only two types, but please take these.”
“Eeeeeeh!?”
“What’s wrong, Cecilia-san?”
“…Land-san, let’s have you apply for a rank promotion.”
“No, I’m satisfied with my current rank.”
Flashback End
—Library—
“…Why exactly did you bring those two in again?”
“With the New Year coming up, I wanted to make a kadomatsu, a kite, and some hagoita paddles…”
“Do not hunt disaster-class monsters for that reason!”
“I wanted to start the year properly, and I heard they were sturdy materials—”
“Enough!”
“…Yes.”
“Both the Elder Trent King and the Greater Wyvern are monsters that a nation would mobilize its full force to subjugate. Their materials are, of course, extremely valuable, and the guild vault was nearly emptied when we bought them from you.”
“Now that you mention it, I didn’t take on any requests after that in January, yet I was able to live just fine.”
“Of course you were. More importantly, you still have money left in your account, don’t you?”
“I don’t keep a household ledger, so…”
“Honestly… Moving on to February. Do you remember what happened?”
“Umm…”
—Side Story—
“By the way, Land-san.”
“Yes?”
“The materials from that Treant King and the others were quite a large quantity. How did you bring them back?”
“Ah, actually, when I was living in the mountains, I once helped a magic tool engineer who had gotten lost. As thanks, he gave me a Magic Bag. Apparently, it can hold about as much as a standard storage shed.”
“Oh, so something like that exists.”
“It does.”