Chương 88: Book 2, Chapter 1: New Headaches

John groaned, staring blearily at the endless spreadsheets that he was going to have to sort through once more. There had to be a better way. Yuki could flip through the whole thing in moments and retain all the information, after all. Maybe spending a month or two bedbound as the kitsune figured out how to make him Unbound would be worth it, if only because he would never have to spend more than thirty seconds looking at paperwork again.

The last month of work had been incredibly stressful; the three days they took to rest and relax after escaping the Nameless Nest were nowhere near enough. Yet, the turn of the seasons waited for no one, and if they wanted Broadstream to make it through the winter without mass starvation, they had to keep at it. Yet, no matter how much he tried, he found himself completely unable to focus, eyes glazing over as words blurred into unintelligible jumbles. He needed a break.

With a sigh, John pushed his chair out from the hastily raised desk, cracking his back as he rose.

"I have more papers for you, Lord Hall," declared a youthful voice that sounded... vaguely familiar. John was pretty sure the guy was one of the militiamen who had investigated the confrontation between them and the tax collectors when Aiki and Haru were collecting their possessions. With a sigh, John walked over to the entry, sliding the door of the converted inn open. The kid must have been sixteen, maybe seventeen at most, and his eyes sparkled with far too much idolization for John's taste.

He shouldn't have been armed with a bow and ready to kill or die for his home, but John supposed it was better than being sent off to whatever war was going on in the south. The youth bowed deeply at the waist, almost tipping himself over from the sheer speed before catching himself. John glanced down, and at the sight of another sheaf of reports in the kid's hands, he felt a little bit more of the light in his soul wink out like a snuffed candle.

"Just... Please leave them on the table. Thank you," John said, fighting the urge to yawn.

"I'm going to stretch my legs."

"Of course, Lord Hall!" the kid beamed, shooting back up before stepping to the side with a bright smile as John shuffled past him, stepping out into the halls of ryokan turned command post. It was a shame that the owner seemed to have fled the area after the taxmen pushed them out, but it did give John and his friends a proper nerve centre for their operation. The economy needed revitalizing, after all, and running messages between his home and the town would have been terribly inefficient.

John was feeling social, but who to talk to? Yuki was probably on the second floor in her human disguise, taking meetings with locals to gather information. Yosuke would be on patrol somewhere. Rin would be overseeing the ongoing money-changing operations as a manager. Her true role was to scare anyone out of doing something stupid. Rin's reputation as a hot-blooded menace after that fight with Yuki in the noodle shop and icing up that merchant had some upsides, at least.

Well, he was sure she could spare a few minutes to talk to her dear old mentor. He had some questions about local logistics that he was unclear on as a "foreigner," and she would be a plenty good source of information, if Yuki was indeed tied up. John took a brief jaunt through the third floor corridors, which had begun to serve as the unofficial 'upper offices' for any staff that were not to be disturbed during working hours.

Unfortunately, it consisted only of him and two scribes Yuki had hired, leaving it feeling rather empty. He climbed down to the second floor and was immediately greeted with the slightly more lively sound of conversation behind closed doors. Here was the administrative heart, supported by "Yumi" and several assistants she had hired for their good social skills.

Here, they conducted the closest thing they had to professional interviews with people about the ongoing conditions, needs, and wants within the local community, collating data for later use. Thankfully, even in her human disguise, the kitsune could hear every conversation down to the heartbeats on the entire floor, which was enough to root out any attempts at deception while she was there.

John walked past the entry to the kitsune's and, alas, she was still in a meeting, judging by the low tones of unintelligible conversation drifting through the closed door. She was probably talking to the owner of a local store, or maybe the village headman whose name he couldn't remember right now. Drat. Rin it was, then. John, finally, made it down to the ground floor, heading down the stairs into... well, it wasn't a chaotic mess, but it was where the few offices open to the public dwelled.

Frontline staff noted basic information and recommended more thorough interviews while providing basic money-changing services, all under the watchful eye of a woman who had a semi-justified reputation for anger issues. She... probably couldn't hear everything on the floor, but nobody here needed to know that. Stalking forward, John strutted through the floor, silently weaving past the few people that filtered through the halls. Each bowed to him, and he returned the gesture in turn, albeit a tad awkwardly.

While he had tried to get everyone to stop, or at least cut down on the gesture, the thought evidently made the average person here so terribly uncomfortable that he gave up on trying. They always mumbled something about "not disrespecting him and his station" or something like that. It was weird, but he supposed they had no way of knowing that he was just a more educated mortal with a newly awakened sense for danger.

He really had to put some time aside to figure out what was up with that, but as long as it wasn't actively killing him, it could probably wait.... Hmm. That was something else to be paranoid about later, but he had things to do today. John found Rin stalking the corridors like a wraith, peeking into a meeting room to make sure everything was going well. She was trying to be subtle, but... cracking the door wasn't the way to go about it.

John could hear the stiff, formal, very clearly put-on tone of the man inside as he went over the basic intake form. Well, she was trying, at least. She was so terribly focused on her job that Rin didn't notice John slowly creeping up behind her, quietly tiptoeing across the wooden floor. Normally, it would be a bad idea to sneak up on a superhuman woman with dragon blood flowing through her veins. He did, however, have enough warding to take bigger strikes than she could throw at a moment's notice.

Now standing by her side, John leaned in above her, peering into the cracked open doorway. At the desk stood a broad, short man, trying his damnedest to go through the script as he was getting stared at by not one, but two of his bosses through the barely open door.

"Do you have any children who live at home?" he asked the woman, glancing over in their direction every few seconds, sweat beading upon his brow.

"Aren't you a charmer? No, my daughters have all gone off to their husbands now," the sixty-ish year old woman responded, heavy nostalgia lingering in her tone.

"Why, are you looking to marry? I think my niece has someone who she is looking for a match for, and you seem like a nice young man..." Terror seized the man as he dryly swallowed, looking over at them once more.

"Nothankyou, ma'am!" he quickly replied, blurring his words together, eyes wide, locked onto theirs. Poor bastard. Well, John had his fun.

"What are we looking at?" John whispered down to Rin. She jolted, limbs suddenly flailing and tail whipping from side to side as she slammed the sliding door shut with a loud clack, quickly throwing herself clear and into a ready position. Instinctively, he flinched as her horns swung unnervingly close to his eye, despite knowing that his warding made for better safety glasses than anything Earth could conjure.

Rin's hand dropped to her sword as she instinctively squared up before suddenly realizing who was in front of her, eyes widening and cheeks reddening.

"Sensei!" she whined, quickly smoothing her clothes as she straightened. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Good..." John began, quickly looking out an open window.

"Afternoon, Rin! I had some questions that I hoped you could answer. Mostly logistics things. I suspect things work a bit differently here, after all." He would kill for a damned train line or a semitruck. Alas, nature always 'snapped back' here due to the Shape of All Things, and any rails or concrete roads were likely going to get eaten by the forest in short order.

He was told that priests could make simple charms to blunt that effect, hence why towns and cities can be made, but the local shrine was currently occupied by exactly one priest who knew only simple charms.

"Of course, sensei!" Rin quickly acquiesced, a smile quickly spreading on her face, any annoyance quickly forgotten. She had been rather deferential lately, looking at him with a bit too much awe for his liking when she thought he wasn't paying attention.

"Walk with me," John requested, and his student hurried to his side as he slipped on his shoes and headed out the front door and onto the streets, making a beeline toward the edge of the town and far away from prying ears. Some fresh air would do him some good, but he didn't want people to overhear and panic. They'd only need to hear "not enough food" and start hoarding.

"Well, we should be alright on firewood for the winter, at least," John said once the crowds had finally thinned out, walking between fenced-off fields of crops towards the outskirts.

"I'm about ninety percent of the way through my latest artifact, and I should finish it this evening once we close shop. Remember that axe of mine that can suck the moisture out of things?" Actually, did he tell Rin about it or only Yuki? He was sure that she saw him using it, at least.

"Essentially, I'm tearing the internals out of it and rebuilding it into a machine that does it to any piece of wood you put into it. I plan to place it in a designated spot toward the edge of town, so anyone who needs to can use it. Assuming it works as it should, it should let people top up their stocks even after it would be far too late to start the drying process. If it gets really bad, you, Yuki, or I can knock down trees in seconds and haul them back," John hurriedly rambled, which Rin nodded along with.

"Housing's not a problem, either. It's unfortunate, but enough of the people that could flee did that we can probably use the abandoned houses as shelters," he continued.

"And the food, sensei?" Rin innocently asked. John winced.

"Bad. We're on track to maybe have a third of what we need," John sighed. John's fort farming operation was designed with self-sufficiency in mind, and could probably support himself, Rin, and Yuki with some hunting and fishing, but... Well, even if he could make enough of his grow lamps, the tail end of the growing season was upon them now, and there was hardly enough time for it to make a difference.

"Have the surrounding villages such bad blood with Broadstream that none can spare aid?" Rin incredulously blurted. Sighing, John shook his head.

"It's not that. Kiku's tax collectors terrorized the whole region, even if Broadstream got it especially bad since it was right by the nest. Maybe the other villages have more, but things are still rather tight for them, too. From the reports I've read, they're hesitant. We need to go outside of the immediate area to get some, I think, which means we'll need to find something to trade."

In retrospect, things would have been a lot easier if Yuki hadn't ground the entire Nameless' hoard into nothing by overwriting its existence, but the risk of leaving some of the wealth behind and starting this whole mess over again was far too high.

One particularly valuable artifact buried somewhere within the halls of that nest would have been all it took for a new Greater Nameless to emerge, and the thought of dealing with one potentially harassing the village's supply lines and trade routes with winter coming up... Brrr. They had found the core of the nest by blind luck last time, and though they wouldn't have Kiku's aid, John doubted he and Yuki would have the time to track one down while making sure Broadstream didn't starve or freeze.

Still, it would have been nice to keep the main body of the hoard, but it was hard to think rationally when you just devoured part of the soul of your monster sister, and what was done was done. He still hadn't asked what she had seen to avoid prying, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Bah, he was getting sidetracked again. What were their options on what to sell, anyhow? They had to have something people might want.

Wood was easily acquired elsewhere, and with food prices surging, they'd have to trade the lumber in bulk to make the effort worth it, even if it were all perfectly dried. It would also mean they'd need enough transport to actually move the wood, which would mean either attracting the attention of traders this late in the season looking for some fast profit, or constructing their own wagons and somehow acquiring labour or draft animals to pull them.

Finished goods would be better, but they had too few skilled craftsmen to make enough of a dent in time, and it didn't solve the problem of getting all the food here. It'd probably take a lot of time to arrange transport and guards. Hmm. John could always make some high-quality finished goods and baubles with fairly minimal effort.

He had already rebuilt the magi-welder, too, so he could easily make items that look distinct from everything else on the market, providing a direct advantage of having a seal of "supernatural Unbound craftsmanship" as a form of branding. If he travelled to a population centre, maybe he could catch the eye of a wealthy buyer or a conglomerate and, from there, he could say he had plenty more pieces for sale back at Broadstream, and thus force trade.

This wasn't the first time he had fallen down this line of thought, but it always came back to one thing: it would mean attracting attention to Broadstream Town. Unfortunately, if people started sniffing around about a mysterious Unbound craftsman, they were going to hear rumours from the town about how he "saved their lives" or "slew five Greater Nameless in a single blow" or something like that, and that'd get eyes on them if nothing else.

From there, maybe they'd get the attention of someone who'd investigate the mysterious kitsune who is, ostensibly, somewhere between two and three hundred years old with seemingly no history. And that's putting aside the time a man detonated himself in the middle of town while trying to kill him. There's a non-zero chance he was well connected, and they'd see yet more people trying to kill him for revenge until it snowballed into wiping out an entire noble family or some nonsense. Did they have an option, though?

They certainly couldn't let the townsfolk starve. Under ordinary circumstances, maybe Yuki would be able to sell a bit of her blood or fur as a high-quality material, but her body was pumped full of enough toxins that it would certainly kill anyone who tried to integrate it into their being.

"Rin, is there a chance that your family has holdings nearby? Or at least, anyone of standing who you might know. If you can think of anyone who would want something I can make... Something non-magical, that is, it would be a great help," John cautiously queried. Outwardly, Rin's expression didn't change. Strange.

"Perhaps I know some family allies, sensei," her tone was measured, slower than it normally was.

"What would you wish to sell to them?"

"Magi-welded furniture for display or heavily improved tools for general use at low prices. Given materials, I can work several times faster than a regular craftsman, so the per-unit cost is far lower. How long does it take one to make a single horseshoe, when I can make dozens in an hour? Expertise, too. I am fully capable of fully draft sealing a room in minutes far better than mortals could dream, for example, or improving many common household items."

"Why not sell them your alarms? I'm sure that the average noble would dream of knowing the second someone entered the building late at night..." she began, only to trail off as she saw John's gaze harden.

"It would be a poor idea," he sighed.

"Even if it gives us the money now, if I introduce anything truly revolutionary, it would draw far more eyes to us than we can handle, unless, of course, you fancy someone finding out about Yuki?" At his question, the Unbound's eyes widened, and she shook her head.

"Besides, if someone truly powerful got a security system like that, the easiest way to make sure none can bypass it is to make sure the owner can produce no more." Dramatically, John drew a finger across his throat in a cutting moment while cringing. Rin winced.

"I'm decent at fighting, Rin. I can't stay on guard forever," he said, gazing out toward the forest. They lapsed into silence, the weight of responsibility settling upon them like iron collars made far too tight.

"Seven days' travel from here is the City of the Iron Mountain," Rin finally added, although every word sounded like she had to force them out.

"The Shimamura family has a presence there, and they've traded Unbinding materials with my family in the past. The name of this Nagahama Rin should easily grant an audience." Alright, now this was getting worrying. What the hell had her so shaken? She was slipping back into that weird quasi-formal phrasing, which she had only used extensively when they first met.

"Is there something wrong with them?" John hesitantly questioned.

"If they're likely to take advantage of us somehow, I'm sure we can find someone else."

"No, no, sensei, I just… don't like them much," the unbound explained, looking away, clearly hiding something. Unfortunately, they didn't have many options, and he refused to pry. It seemed like a personal matter.

"Then I think we have a kitsune to talk with to arrange some things," John muttered before pausing, a faint frown flickering onto his face before disappearing. This wasn't much of a break.

"Actually, how about we stop for lunch first? Your break must have been coming up soon, and heavens know that my eyes are going to start bleeding if I stare at another spreadsheet." The concerning stillness in Rin's form broke down all at once, a bright smile tugging at the edges of her face.

"Of course, sensei!" she beamed happily. With a smile, John turned back into the city. Rin was going to be less happy when she realized that they were going to the same restaurant she almost levelled when they first met.

"Granny Noodles" made a good bowl; embarrassing his student was merely a bonus.