Chương 44: Chapter 41

"There's nothing wrong with eating sausages." Chael had chosen to comfort Sobelle after she revealed that most of the cheap meat—in a sense—merchants sold were just refurbished leftovers from animals. Crops like onions, garlic, or lime, got blended into them to hide their taste and smell. Sometimes vinegar was even used, or emptied vases of brine. Chael had carefully explained all this to Sobelle, and she did not take any of it lightly. After the young merchant was done, Sobelle holed up and refused to talk.

She just kept butchering the dead boar as though she was letting out her frustration by doing so. Which she did; it felt good to cut up the stupid animal repeatedly and made her feel powerful over all its disgusting parts and organs. A wave of nausea came over Sobelle when she encountered a mass of writing worms after she opened the boar's gut. She was about to throw the whole thing into the lake but Chael stopped her, Sobelle glared at the merchant and Chael responded with a sorry grin.

"We can use these as bait, did you know that?" Chael was probably doing this out of concern but to Sobelle, it looked like she was being looked down upon.

"We make traps inside this like, maybe we'll get a fish or two?"

"Lakes are too stationary." Sobelle had chosen to camp next to a lake because it was close to water, not because she wanted to catch fish off of this thing.

"They have insects, worms, and other unnecessary things that we are better off not putting next to our trapped fish. We should bring these to a river."

"Right, a river. That makes sense." Chael stood up and walked to the nearby forest where she began to inspect the tree bark. Sobelle watched her for a moment before she turned away and went back to butchering. Chael eventually came back, "Ah, here!" She knocked on the strip of tree bark she found and a hollow sound rang out.

"This here is perfect to turn into a basket, we can put the worms in this thing for the time being." Chael started a fire and used the heat from that to mellow out the bark. She constantly bent it every time it was exposed to the flames, up until the wood had the shape of a bucket. When it did, she let it cool and then stuffed it with dirt, the worms were then buried into it to keep them nice and cool. She sprinkled water to improve the conditions for the parasites.

Sobelle had butchered the boar well enough to separate it into various pieces by the time Chael was finished and together, they cut the meat that they'd smoked and preserved and once all of those were carefully laid out they worked on making the sausages. The merchant occasionally glanced at Sobelle to look at her reaction, but eventually stopped once it was proven that Sobelle no longer cared about how sausages were made.

"My hands smell like garlic, and they're starting to sting too." Their chosen spice for the sausages were garlic and Chael complained just as they only had a quarter left of the meat.

"What about yours, Sobelle?"

"I'm the same." She confirmed. Though she didn't really hate having garlic fingers, her mother had suffered through several of these back when she was still alive.

"It will wash off once we go to the river to set up the fish traps."

"Oh, right. The fish traps." Chael sighed and looked down. Disappointed, she said, "I can't believe we still have so much work to do, we need to smoke the sausages—" most of which have already started on top of the smoldering fire Chael used to harden the clay pots she made.

"—and then we have to make fish traps. Ugh, the life of a merchant really is hard."

"I'm going to eat most of these." Sobelle pointed out, and rightfully so. She was the one who hunted the boar and so she would get the biggest cut.

"I don't see what's the use of selling anything when we don't really need money." Stolen story; please report.

"Yes we do!" Chael crossed her arms defensively. She poked Sobelle, "one day, when we're traveling together, you'll see just how important money is." Now what was she talking about? Sobelle had no intentions of traveling with this girl. She'd go out into the world and become a mercenary who constantly hunted down monsters to earn money, that was how she was going to live once she was out of the village. Traveling with a merchant and selling stuff just sounded stupid.

"And besides, we need to stack up on a boatload of stuff seeing as it will be breeding season for Reeb's soon." Chael mentioned Hull Breakers, which were an animal Sobelle was quite familiar with as she's seen her father kill one and bring it home in the past. Hull Breakers were sea bugs that possessed an unbearably tough shell.

So tough in fact that any ships unfortunate enough to pass under them would face a sunken fate because the wood and resin used to build their hulls were not enough to resist the sharp, segmented shell of a Reeb. Sobelle knew they were in season, they usually were during this time of year. As all four moons would leave the sky, causing the Great Blue to be sad and hide away in the depths. This meant that the waters would turn shallow, but not too much.

There was just enough sea along the edges of the land that the rocky outcrops became the perfect breeding ground for the Reebs. No fishes meant nothing would eat their eggs. And while the people of UnThilen do consider those a delicacy, most mercenaries believe them to be not worth the risk, as their powerful rams could kill an unarmored man in a single exchange. Most men are unarmored.

And so, the Reebs are left to populate the outer reaches of the shoreline, where they prevent sailors from traveling and reaching the nearest port city of UnThilen. Supplies dwindled locally and trade became far more expensive, especially for food. Sobelle wasn't quite good at being a merchant but she knew that opportunities like a lack of supply was when people like Chael thrived. She was definitely building up a supply of food to be sold in UnThilen wasn't she?

"What will you trade the food for?" Sobelle tied the intestine she stuffed with meat and garlic into a knot.

"Hemp? I hear there's plenty of those back in UnThilen, the swamp provides strong ones too."

"Maybe? I can use some hemp, but more importantly, I think it'd be great if we can get uhm... Hold on, let me think." Chael tilted her head and pursed her lips as she went into deep thought. She looked at the sky with hazy eyes for a moment, then said, "Grinnen lacked steel and lumber the last time we got there, but they had an excess of wool. Hemp would be useless there right now."

"I see." Sobelle still did not know what Chael talked about. They had wool but not hemp, so why wouldn't they want the latter?

"You can't sell hemp there?"

"No, I can. But it'll be at a lower price, so either we go even or we lose a lot of money. There would be no in between." Was going even bad? Sobelle didn't think so, but maybe that was because she wasn't a merchant.

"We need to earn a profit if we want to save up while building our next stock... Wait no, we can just make more food and only our time and efforts would be the cause of it." Sobelle nodded along as Chael continued to rant about how profits and efforts were correlated and that they would never have this kind of opportunity ever again so they needed to give it their all and earn as much as possible so that their journey wouldn't end up being difficult.

But if they do get an excess of money, wouldn't that mean they already won? Sobelle asked Chael this and she said:"No, not at all. We need to buy carriages, beds, clothes, and a bunch of supplies every time we're on the road. By that point, we wouldn't have enough no matter how much effort we put in, so we need to buy stuff. And that is if I discounted the cost of repairs and buying weak animals such as horses." Chael knew a lot about this sort of thing huh?

Sobelle nodded and accepted the explanation at face value. There was a lot Chael wasn't saying because she believed them to be common sense.

"I see, guess we have to make a lot of items then. I can start making traps every day and hunt boars on a daily basis if you want? I'm sure we'd be able to make a lot of money if we work hard." Sobelle hadn't intended to help Chael with her stuff but after she learned that the young merchant wanted to go to UnThilen, she changed her mind. Armor would be present in that city, as well as tools and weaponry she would never get access to all on her own.

If Chael was truly good, then she'd be able to earn a lot of money, and Sobelle would buy improved gear using this money. This was her plan.