Why was he asking about my weapon?
Beside the office door stood the Deros Bow, which I had leaned against the wall.
I turned my palm upward and pointed to the Deros Bow, as if introducing a gentleman or lady.
“At present, I mainly use the bow I left over there.”
I added that, since it had not been long since I crossed into this other world, archery was the only thing I had learned.
When Larsson heard that my main weapon was a bow, his face brightened.
“So you do not have a sword you favor in particular.”
“I do have a dagger I received in the Alhen Region.”
“Oh dear, you are a dimension traveler in name and fact. What do you mean, an ordinary dagger? You should use equipment suited to your status.”
“I would not go so far as to call it status.”
“Or perhaps you are reluctant to use a sword......”
“That is not the case. In the Alhen Region, the circumstances happened to line up, so I learned archery. If Mr. Nadan had been a swordsman, I would have learned the sword.”
“I am relieved to hear you do not avoid swords. Please wait a moment.”
Larsson lifted his back from the sofa and stood, then removed a painting hanging in the corner of the office.
Behind the place where he removed the painting, there was a safe.
Larsson opened the safe and pushed his hand deep among the piles of documents and precious metals stacked inside.
Then he rummaged through them carelessly.
As if documents and precious metals valuable enough to be stored in a safe were nothing more than insignificant odds and ends compared to the item he was about to take out.
Around the time I was finishing my second cup of tea, Larsson returned to the sofa and placed an item on the sofa table.
It was a sword hilt.
There was no blade, only the hilt sitting there by itself.
Before I could ask, Larsson revealed the hilt’s history on his own.
“Venom Sword. It is an item a dimension traveler who stopped by long ago entrusted to my father. After my father passed away, I inherited it.”
“Are you saying this is a dimension traveler-exclusive weapon?”
“You guessed correctly. Try holding the hilt.”
For a sword hilt, it had no guard attached to the upper part where a guard should have been.
If Larsson had called it a short rod, I would have believed without a doubt that it was a rod.
When I gripped the hilt, a series of information flowed into my head.
-Usage of dimension traveler-exclusive weapon ‘Venom Sword’
-Venom Sword is equipment that can store poison and create a blade of poison.
-Absorbed poison is strengthened several times over by Venom Sword’s effect, and opponents cut by the poison blade can be poisoned immediately.
-The blade’s shape, thickness, and length can be generated freely by imagining the blade. However, creating a large blade requires a large amount of poison.
Larsson watched with interest as I remained still without a word.
“So you truly were a dimension traveler.”
I set down the hilt of Venom Sword and spoke.
“You did not believe me?”
“It is not that I doubted you. It is just that, now that it has been proven true, I am newly surprised, you might say. Realizing that there truly is a dimension traveler before my eyes feels fresh. What happened when you held the hilt?”
“The usage of Venom Sword flowed into my head.”
“Aha~, I understand. So that is why it was a weapon only a dimension traveler could use. When I held it, nothing happened.”
“Since it has the premium of being a dimension traveler-exclusive weapon, whether it can be used or not, it has plenty of value as a collection piece.”
I had thought he had taken it out both to directly confirm whether I was truly a dimension traveler and to show off his collection.
This was a person providing an expensive room to me without limit.
Going along with his amusement was not even enough trouble to count as effort.
But when Larsson heard my words, he immediately waved his hands.
“A collection piece! Not at all! This is an item I am giving to you, Mr. Seong-jin. Please accept it.”
Again with people stuffing things into my sleeves.
“I am not sure whether it is all right for me to accept this.”
“You must accept it. The dimension traveler who entrusted Venom Sword to us long ago asked us to. He said that since he now had to return to his original world, we should keep Venom Sword and pass it on to a dimension traveler who crossed over in a later generation.”
Inheritance of dimension traveler-exclusive weapons.
This was not merely a story about the dimension traveler who had crossed over several decades ago.
They said that, for several centuries, dimension travelers had entrusted their equipment to people of this other world before leaving, all for the sake of later generations.
The dimension traveler who had stopped by the Omoreo Region several decades ago had likewise inherited and used Venom Sword from somewhere, and when it became his turn to leave, he acted exactly as his predecessors had.
Holding the sword hilt, I spoke.
“This is only my intuition, but it seems there is something you would like me to do using this Venom Sword.”
Larsson clapped his hands together in admiration.
“You guessed correctly. How did you know?”
“I do hear from time to time that I have good intuition.”
“I will cut to the chase and state my business. While enjoying the hot springs, please climb Volter Mountain in your spare time and purify several water sources.”
“Please explain in more detail.”
“To summarize briefly, from the middle slopes of Volter Mountain upward, it is an area where monsters appear. Most of the monsters carry deadly poison. Several water sources have been contaminated by the poison they leak.”
The hot spring water of Volter Mountain flowed down from the upper reaches of Volter Mountain, passed below the mountain through the underground, and the residents drew up and used the groundwater heated by geothermal energy.
However, because monsters had long been subjugated and steadily buried in the ground, the poison flowing out of their corpses seeped underground and contaminated several water veins.
Now, they were spending more money to dispose of subjugated monsters far away from Volter Mountain, but several water veins had already been contaminated, so it was nothing more than fixing the stable after losing the cow.
He said the number of currently usable hot springs was only half compared to before the contamination.
They could not be certain that the contaminated water veins would not affect other water veins.
While they were wondering how to handle the matter, I had visited.
Larsson bowed his head to me and politely asked.
“I sincerely ask this of you. I will prepare generous compensation, so please accept.”
I reached out, gently took Larsson’s shoulder, and made him raise his head.
Then I asked Luna for her opinion.
“What do you think?”
“Do as you find comfortable, Master.”
“Mm, if I am doing as I find comfortable anyway, then I can also handle the bathing matter as I find comfortable, right?”
“.......”
“If you do not want to wash yourself, I will wash you.”
Of course, I meant that I would wash her if she was in cat form.
Caring for a cat one kept was basic knowledge for a butler.
However, Larsson, who did not know Luna’s identity, took it in a completely different sense and looked troubled.
“Um... we do not have mixed bathing here. Other villages do have it, but.......”
Luna borrowed Larsson’s words exactly and used them to respond to my joke.
“What a shame. If it were with Master, I might have considered it. But since the rules say it cannot be done, I suppose I must endure it.”
Larsson still failed to grasp the context and addressed the conversation seriously.
“If you wish, we can empty a bath for a short time for the two of you.”
For an instant, Luna’s eyes flashed.
Her golden pupils gleamed murderously.
Luna’s gaze was saying not to do anything unnecessary.
Did she hate it that much?
I picked up Venom Sword again, which I had set down once.
“As it happens, I needed travel funds.”
“The compensation will be one hundred gold coins. I will give it to you as a mix of cash and promissory notes. It will be paid once the work is complete.”
Since they had said I could think of one gold coin as fifty thousand won, one hundred gold coins would be an amount reaching five million won.
For four days, putting in spare effort between enjoying hot spring baths, for five million won.
Four days, five million, in my spare time.
Judging only by the amount, it was generous.
Though there was no way for me to know right now whether it truly was generous treatment.
I would know once I experienced it myself.
I could earn travel funds while filling Venom Sword with plenty of poison, and the residents of Volter Mountain could secure an environment they could feel safe about.
It was a win-win for each side.
There was no reason to refuse.
After thinking it over, I put my decision into words.
“I will accept the proposal you just made.”
***
“Luna, I’m going to the bath.”
Inside the special suite Larsson had prepared for me.
On top of the cupboard in the living room, Luna was warmly loafing.
In a state where her fur had absorbed moisture and grown damp.
The cat claw marks remaining on both my arms spoke of what had happened during our stay in the special suite.
Just a little while ago, I had fought a fierce battle in the bathroom attached to the special suite.
Because I had forced myself to scrub her fur, Luna was thoroughly sulking, and the moment the bath ended, she had taken refuge somewhere my hands could not reach.
I rolled my sleeves above my elbows and spoke.
“See? Now that you washed, you do not smell, and it is so much nicer.”
I deliberately mixed a nasal tone into my voice and spoke gently, but Luna still ignored me and did not even answer.
“.......”
“It would be a waste not to take care of yourself when you have such a pretty form.”
Perhaps the word pretty worked, because Luna, who had not moved an inch, opened one eye, looked down at me, and rose.
Luna lowered her head from atop the cupboard, raised her rump high, and stretched in the way unique to four-legged animals.
Then she leaped lightly, landed softly on the king-size bed, and curled up in the middle of the blanket.
“Mwaaow~.”
Luna had slept in cat form every night on the way here.
She said it was far more refreshing than sleeping in a human body.
After sleeping in the same space for several days, one rule had formed between us.
Whether I could sleep while holding her that night depended on Luna’s mood.
If she was in a good mood, she allowed me to hold her while sleeping. If she was in a bad mood, she went to a corner my hands could not reach and slept alone.
It seemed the word pretty I had tossed out just now had softened her mood a little.
Since I had come this far, I threw out an exemplary line to fully soothe Luna’s mood.
“You do not need to worry about the scratches. Mr. Nadan entrusted you to me, so I should repay that little by little, even if it is like this.”
She was surely bothered by scratching me with her claws.
Of course, I had not made that up just to soothe her mood.
At my family home alone, we had one dog and two cats, and my younger sister had three dogs... I had experience when it came to washing animals.
What did a few claw marks matter?
But Luna looked at me indifferently, then heartlessly turned her body away and climbed back up onto the cupboard.
As if her mood had become extremely bad.
“Myaow!”
Was the part about Mr. Nadan entrusting her to me not to her liking?
It was true that I owed Mr. Nadan a debt, so why was she angry?
The mind of a “cat” was something one could understand and still not understand.