Episode 3: The Final Resting Place
I’m Andrews.
I’m the kind of guy who got reincarnated into another world after buying a geezer (God) I happened to meet on Earth a drink.
It’s a funny story, but after twenty-five years, I’ve come to terms with it.
I even got a Magic Cheat, so I won’t have any trouble making a living.
But humans are rarely satisfied with just “making a living.”
They say, “Two cups of unpolished rice and miso with a few vegetables a day,” but what’s fun about living on just that?
I’m a human, a man. I want to hold women, eat good food, and drink alcohol.
I also want to enjoy my hobbies, like making Magic Items and playing with magic.
That being said, I didn’t want to go around rampaging with the Magic Cheat I got.
Well, I did think, “I’ll use this power to climb to the top and live the good life!” when I first reincarnated, you know?
But as I lived in this world, those ambitions disappeared.
Even if I managed to rise to the top by blowing away noble knights who were strong enough to kill even me if I let my guard down, and became one of the nobles.
I didn’t think that a commoner like me, born a poor farmer, could jump into the world of politics and intrigue and succeed.
Besides, the lives of the nobles I peeked at with magic were terrible. They hated and killed each other, fought for power, and couldn’t even eat a meal in peace, and they had to share that with their families.
And again, assuming I succeeded as a noble, I would be involved in the country’s administration, and the intrigue would start again, right? This time, the opponent would be a neighboring hostile country.
Use magic like a nuclear missile to obliterate their entire country?
Even I, who am not well-versed in politics, know that doing so would turn the whole world against me and form a coalition.
So, I’d turn the whole world against me and burn every country to the ground? How utterly ridiculous.
If not, I’d have to use untrustworthy subordinates and desperately rack my brains to rule the country…
Would that really be fun?
Can the strongest magic power be used to govern the world?
When I thought about it, I realized.
It’s best to work moderately hard, achieve a decent position, and live a quiet, happy life.
That’s what I came to think…
The power of the Magic Cheat was clearly heretical.
Magic is the act of uttering a ‘True Word,’ a ‘word of power,’ imbued with Magical Power, to cause a corresponding phenomenon.
However, it’s not enough to simply mimic the pronunciation of a word of power.
First, as a prerequisite, you need to be able to manipulate Magical Power… in other words, enhance your body, and you need to be able to use ‘Incantation,’ a Magic Skill that infuses words with Magical Power. On top of that, it takes an average person ten years to master a single word.
It takes about five years to learn body enhancement and Incantation, and ten years to learn one word, so magicians are rare.
Words?
Well, for example.
If you chant “אֵשׁ (fire),” a ball of flame will appear in front of you.
If you chant “אֵשׁ (fire) לַחדוֹר (pierce),” a flaming arrow that reaches a long distance will be released.
If you chant “אֵשׁ (fire) לַחדוֹר (pierce) שְׁלוֹשָׁה (three),” three flaming arrows will fly out together.
That’s how magic is normally used, it seems.
It’s not like you can just vaguely say, “Do something good,” and have it work out somehow… except for me.
However, even with such magic, there were limits.
I can’t “bring out convenient tools from Earth” or “bring out delicious crops from Earth.”
Basically, magic is a power limited to this world, and even if I forced open a door to another world, there’s no guarantee that world would be the Earth I lived on, and so on. There are too many problems.
There are too many parallel worlds and whatnot, so the probability of me returning to my Earth is close to zero.
Also, if you cross dimensions, Tindalos-like time police demons will attack you. I once had a serious battle with one and spent three days killing it, but I never want to do that again…
Well, I’m pretty much screwed in various ways, so I decided to improve my life in my own way.
First of all, as a major premise, this world is dirty.
Apparently, there are sewers, and they flush feces and domestic wastewater into them, which then flows into rivers.
However, the water supply system is small, and they often use wells to get water. They seem to keep the water supply system from the upper reaches of the river to a minimum because they are afraid of flooding.
There are also bathhouses, if you can call them that.
People wash their hands and wipe their faces.
…But the sewers are always poorly maintained and prone to clogging, the bathhouses are dirty because they reuse the water without changing it, and the well water that is generally used is also dirty with strange bacteria, so it’s the worst.
As a former Japanese person, I can’t compromise on hygiene and diet!
That’s why I sold something to a colleague I happened to meet who said he was the illegitimate child of a noble.
Noon.
I flip the hanging sign of Andrews’s Pharmacy to “Open.”
And in less than an hour…
“Excuse me!”
A customer arrives.
The customer… a young woman says:
“Please give me five ‘Bar of Soap’!”
And…
I take a palm-sized ‘Bar of Soap’ from the shelf and say:
“That’ll be 15,000 Lid.”
“Yes!”
I receive fifteen white copper coins from the woman and hand her the soap in return.
“Wow! This is the rumored Bar of Soap! It was worth coming all the way from the village two over!”
“Is five enough?”
“I’m collecting money from the children in the village and coming as a representative, you know? There are still many children who don’t believe there is such a thing as Bar of Soap~! So today is a trial! If everyone knows how comfortable this soap is, they will buy more!”
“For orders of ten or more, please order from the wholesaler in the main street shopping district, okay? We only do retail here.”
“Yes, I understand.”
Then the woman wraps the soap in a hemp bag, puts it in a basket she is holding, and leaves.
…Yes, the conspicuous product that I released into the world while wanting to avoid standing out. That is the ‘Bar of Soap’!
Hygiene! I just couldn’t stand it…
Even if I stand out as the developer of Bar of Soap in this way, and have a large house with a store in the city at this young age…, this was absolutely necessary.
I have no regrets.
And at night.
I say that I don’t want to stand out, but there is one more drawback that I can’t stand, even if it’s conspicuous.
That’s the bath.
I think I told you that public bathhouses are too dirty.
People with jock itch come in normally, and they don’t change the water very often because it’s a waste of hot water.
Well, it can’t be helped because firewood is expensive.
Oh, oil, coal, and gas haven’t been discovered yet, so there’s no choice but firewood.
There are no boilers or systems like Roman baths that don’t waste heat, so you pour the hot water boiled in the water heater (mostly in the kitchen) into the bath and dilute it with water. That’s how it is in households.
In large bathhouses like public bathhouses, they use the waste heat from the bakery’s bread-baking oven to heat the water.
Heat the water with magical tools?
Don’t be ridiculous, would I use a super-valuable Magic Item for such a trivial purpose?
Magic Items are too rare to get even if you pay a lot of money, you know?
Their purpose is mostly for weapons or amulets to protect nobles…
In the first place, Magic Items require Magical Power to be activated, so most people who can’t use Magical Power can’t use them.
Inevitably, they are mostly weapons for the warrior class who can manipulate Magical Power.
Only idiots have Magic Items to heat bath water.
“Andrews-sama, the bath is ready.”
And I am an idiot.
…Yes, I made it.
A Magic Item that heats bath water without using firewood.
I went to a ‘Demon Lair’, all alone! In a distant foreign land so no one would notice! I secretly conquered it! And made it!
…But it’s not that great.
A metal rod wrapped in a net glows red when you press a button. That’s all it is.
You submerge this in water, turn on the switch, and it heats up. Moreover, it’s a battery type that I can charge with Magical Power, so anyone can turn on the switch and heat the water, not just me! Amazing!
I really wanted a cypress bath, but there doesn’t seem to be a plant called cypress around here, so it’s stone tile.
The drain is connected to the sewer, and the water supply is groundwater.
I’m actually secretly using a Magic Item to pump up this groundwater, but I buried it in the ground secretly at night, so no one should have noticed…
Well, it’s like a pump and filter.
It easily pumps up groundwater.
That’s why we have running water in our house!
For the same reason, the toilet is also nice. I don’t like chamber pots, so I made an S-shaped pipe that doesn’t smell and use it.
Yeah, really.
When it comes to hygiene, though, I just can’t compromise.