Meat’s Name and Making the Ring

In the end, it appears that it was decided that Cave of Desires was a derivation from Flame Cavern through Hero Wataru’s report.

Before heading to Wakoku, he’ll be returning to the imperial capital for a while to do several jobs in order to pay back his debt.

Taking the occasion to gather, he made a promise with Gozoh and Roppu to go to Wakoku together with them.

No more drinking until I repay my debt!

He said that, but can he really keep it up…? Definitely something to worry about.

Then again, Haku-san would probably just shoulder his debt if he’s late on payments so it’s no problem for us really.

“Weeell, the hero’s heading back, looks like we can go back to being carefree.”

“Kehma, even without the hero here you shouldn’t be that carefree…”

I looked away from Rokuko’s remark… right, come to think of it I have to give Meat a new name huh. I just remembered.

It was a good time for it, so I had brought her to the room and was using her as a hug pillow.

“Meat. Your name.”

“I-it’s fine as is. I-I’ll become a good Meat so…”

When I said ‘name’, Meat trembled like a puppy that someone was trying to take their important blanket from.

“… Right, I’ll think about that in at least five years. So for now let’s think of a name.” 1

“Heeey, what’s ‘Meat’ mean anyways? I missed the chance to ask…”

Aah, I was going to explain it to Rokuko just there, but I’m finding myself at a loss for words.

… I can’t say something like it means sex toy. That’d definitely be hard to say to this person that knows nothing.

And so, I decided that I didn’t hear her.

“Your new name is Meat Blackdog. I’ll call you Black outside. Sound good?”

When I said that, Meat was surprised that I’d be leaving ‘Meat’ as her name, so she blinked her eyes.

In the end, I decided for it to be Blackdog since she is a black dog. It has the feeling that she’ll be proud of her black hair-ness. I’m definitely not cutting corners here. Definitely not.

… I’d asked Ichika concerning what to name her, but beastkin really do place an extreme importance on their name, to the point that it seems more so than their life. The story is that once they learn their name, it will stick with them for life no matter what’s said and done. Hearing countless examples—to the extent that schoolkids would seriously say things like ‘Will you stake your life on it?’—I got the impression that trying to change it was no good.

In short, It’s useless even if I changed it, I wouldn’t know what would happen even if I tried to forcibly do it. Or rather, it’s already too late. Like a field mine laid years ago. I decided to postpone purposely blowing up the bomb.

Well, when it comes to having a name that describes her precisely, even if it’s by instinct, ‘Blackdog’ should be more or less satisfying for her… Yeah. I’m not cutting corners at all. I’m being serious. Serious I said!

… I just hope that Meat doesn’t explode until she’s an adult at least.

“So, let’s go to the guild to try and register your new name tomorrow… It should take some money, but it’s no problem. Even if it took gold coins. Understand?”

“Y-yes—”

Meat answered while gladly wagging her tail back and forth.

“Heeey, so what does ‘Meat’ mean?”

“… Ask Ichika.”

I decided to leave it to Ichika to explain it to Rokuko.

Even though we were changing Meat’s registered name with the guild, it took thirty silver coins. We were able to easily go through the procedures at the branch office though.

It was cheaper than I thought it’d be.

*

Since Rokuko had deepened her friendship with Redra while I was sleeping, I thought of something.

When I sleep so much, it feels like I’m useless.

Well, even so I don’t really mind and could just keep sleeping, but doesn’t it feel like I’m just a mascot? I don’t want to be put in the mascot box! I don’t want to be the mascot with a bad expression that gets caught between two futons like some dorayaki! 2

Thus, even though I don’t really want to I decided that I would do some work.

To speak accurately, I would make more magic sword blade golems. They’re something that only I can make after all.

“Oh iron, become a magic sword, Create Golem—ah.”

I made a blade golem with a considerably suitable chant. The magical power consumption is curbed remarkably compared to not using a chant… I don’t really need to bother though since it’s not like I’ll run out of magical power though. Even though I definitely remember feeling fatigued back when I first used the life magic Cleanup… wonder if it’s something like growing up?

For now let’s resupply the Treasure Chests and make the same kind of magic swords the hero took.

As for what these Treasure Chests are, they are boxes that replenish the items in them after a certain period of time. At a cost of 100 DP.

Other than having them use DP to resupply by choosing from a list if you let it happen automatically, you can also replenish them with items chosen beforehand.

Haku-san said that it’s a popular item among dungeon masters that find restocking to be troublesome.

I’d like to make more powerful magic swords—err, golems, but I don’t have a good way to… Even our most powerful piece, the iron golem, turned out to be useless and got sliced up by the hero.

Although the hero that came this time was relatively friendly, there might be a day that a hero fully intending to crush the dungeon core comes.

It’s probably best to upgrade its materials after thinking about it, so I took a look at the raw materials I could get with DP.

… Oh, come to think of it I promised Rokuko a ring huh. Let’s make it before I forget.

It should need just about as much needed to make a coin, so it shouldn’t cost too much.

And so I bought Orichalcum (1 MM Diameter, 10 CM Length: 10,000 DP).

Suddenly expensive! But it can’t be helped, it looks great!

Orichalcum has a golden tint with a silvery sheen, with a slightly rainbow-colored luster. It really does feel like a fantasy metal.

It’s extremely expensive even though it’s just ten centimeters, and in addition I couldn’t bend it even though I tried to with everything I had. Even when I used pliers, it didn’t look like it was even near yielding at all. The heck is this, is it really a metal?

For the time being I started processing it with Create Golem but… it consumed a considerable amount of time and magical power even though I was just turning ten centimeters of it into the shape of a ring. This is the first time in a while I’ve felt tired from using magical power, it took everything I had even though I properly used a chant. In this case I was able to shape it how I wanted even better than iron by filling it with enough of my magical power, but normally how would someone turn this into a sword?

I took another look at the orichalcum loop… It cost enough DP to use up ten gold coins, how luxurious. Isn’t this a ten million yen ring? It might have been better to quietly make it out of money.

Next, I purchased Synthetic Ruby (Unprocessed Boule: 30 DP). It’s really cheap compared to the orichalcum. Moreover a huge gem the size of a finger came out… what the heck’s a boule? 3

I thought about using a tiny natural gem, but like this the synthetic ruby is cheaper and has a much better color to it. Moreover since it’s synthetic it barely has anything inside it (impurities), so in a meaning it could be called even more pure than a true ruby.

It’d probably be deemed heresy from a jeweler’s point of view though. At any rate, I have no relation to it’s composition since I’ll be kneading and kneading it with Create Golem… Oh, it’s really easy to do. It feels like my magical power just sticks to it.

Well, I wrapped the orichalcum loop in the ruby… There’s a lot of ruby left over, maybe I’ll make some hair ornaments?

At any rate, I made an orichalcum ring with a ruby coating. The orichalcum shined inside the transparent ruby’s red brilliance. It’s a simple design, but it suits Rokuko.

Let’s make a box that suits it… Ah, handing her this will be a bit embarrassing…

I was able to make the ring, so let’s think about how to power-up the dungeon again.

I thought about it when I was touching the orichalcum, but wouldn’t it already be the strongest if I made an orichalcum golem where its whole body is orichalcum?

Let’s ignore how much DP that would take. A little wire was 10,000, so the amount needed for a full golem might be ridiculous. And then it’d be a story of magical power too.

… How do people usually process orichalcum?

Footnotes:

The original wording might be implying that he’s not serious about that statement, just saying it to soothe Meat due to her trembling.

Here’s a dorayaki. Two pancakes with sweet bean paste filling between them.

Synthetic unprocessed boule image here.