Volume 5 - Ch 4.8
Thank you kindly for all you have done for me. Well then, if you will excuse me, I will be on my way.
I took all of the items that were prepared for me and promptly left the Dukes office. I returned to the castles lobby and left the Bodes Castle, returning back home to Roxanne and Sherry.
All right, I managed to get my hands on the commission order from a noble, so we might go to Palmasque and buy the mirrors.
I said to the girls during breakfast when we were discussing everything that has happened while I was away.
You really managed to obtain something so important so easily like that?
Sherry looked quite surprised, even though she was the one who told me that we were going to need a commission order from a noble in order to get our hands on mirrors without decorative frames.
It would seem that the matter of obtaining a Palmasque mirror has given you a surprisingly large amount of additional benefits, master.
Y-Yeah, that may be so, but I am actually as surprised as Sherry is, if not even more. I mean, I did not expect that obtaining a commission for the mirrors with non-decorative frames from a noble is going to be so easy. It almost feels as if it happened too easy.
You should not feel surprised. You have already proven time and time again that good things tend to happen naturally around you, master.
Putting aside the matter of whether such things really are happening around me naturally or not, I think that most of the luck that I seem to be having lately can be attributed to the straightforward and free-spirited disposition of the Duke of Hartz. I would not go as far as to say that he is light-hearted or careless, but to put it another way that will not make it seem as if I was making fun of him or insulting him: he has this rare ability to make quick but reasonable decisions and to execute them immediately for maximum effectiveness.
So master, how many mirrors are we going to be buying? Two? Or just one for ourselves this time?
Actually, the commission that the Duke has written is for a grand total of ten Palmasque Mirrors with undecorated frames. The Duke also said that we do not have to bring the mirrors to him all at once, and that as long as we manage to deliver them to him safely, we can take as much time as we want, but the exact amount depends on how well the talks in Palmasque are going to go, but if you asked me , it is definitely better go with one mirror at a time so that we could be absolutely sure that none of them are going to break accidentally. Also, for the mirror that we will be buying here for our home, I think that one is going to be more than enough. If you want, we can even but the one that is going to be equipped with a simple stand instead of the one that would be hanged on the wall.
I see. That could definitely come in handy, because then we would be able to move it around without the risk of damaging it. What great thinking of you, master!
What about the size of those ten mirrors though? Did the Duke of Hartz specified what kind of mirrors exactly would he want?
He said that he would not mind it if the sizes were different so that he could experiment with them and choose the best one based on that. Like I was saying, since the commission that the Duke wrote asks for ten mirrors in total, it is going to be impossible to carry all of them all at once, so we will e transporting them over the course of several trips. And since I also learned that the merchant who is well acquainted with the Duke of Hartz runs a shop that deals with amber and I got a letter of introduction thanks to which I will be able to do business with that merchant as if I was the Duke himself, then we might as well go and find out exactly how big of a demand for amber is in Palmasque right now.
Certainly, since we are going to be heading there again, it would be best to maximize our profits from such a trip as much as possible. I understand.
Sherry started nodding vigorously at my suggestion. As expected of her, she really does know what is good for our business. It looks like I will be able to leave the matters of making all of the purchases un her capable hands again and everything is going to be fine.
After finishing our meal, we warped to the Adventurers Guild in Palmasque, where I sent the girls to take care of the shopping after giving them the written commission, money necessary to make the purchases and a silver coin for the City Entrance Tax. I was a little bit worried about giving them something so important as the commission written by the Duke of Hartz, but unfortunately, as much as I would love to go to Palmasque and deal with everything by myself without giving my important items to others, I simply cannot do that because I am not an Adventurer, and once that fact gets discovered by the Knight serving under the Palmasque City Council during the Intelligence Card inspection, they might get all suspicious of me and start asking questions, and what is an Explorer heading out of the building that should have been reserved for Adventurers usage only if not extremely sus? Yeah, exactly!
Also, while Sherry did not say anything about it, I have a lingering feeling that slaves might not like royalty and aristocrats very much, so the guards might find it suspicious that a slave is carrying an order with a commission written by a noble, but then again, maybe that exact fact is going to work to our advantage here? After all, since royalty and nobles use slaves all the time, it might not actually be strange at all for them to be sending their slaves to the shopping instead of going personally, because they might see it as too much of a bother to handle such a menial task by themselves.
Having Roxanne and Sherry go do the shopping in my stead is a waste of the two silver coins for the City Entrance Task in my opinion, since if I went there by myself I would have to use only a single silver coin, but going to Palmasque is out of the question for me right now. Well, it is not that it would be totally impossible for me, but it would definitely be extremely hard.
Since Warp can only take me to the places that I have seen and been to myself, than that leaves only Palmasques Adventurers Guild and what little of the city that I have seen from within it. Of course, I could always try warping to Palmasque in the middle of the night, when I would be pretty sure that nobody could see me warp into the city from a place other than the Adventurers Guild, since normally such a thing should not be possible without having Warplike I do which is a Bonus Skill, but then I would have another problem on my plate: how to spend the time in the city until the morning throughout the night hours?
And would people not find it extra suspicious if there was a complete stranger whom they have never seen before wandering around the time at even more suspicious hours from the dead of night to the early morning? Staying at an inn might have been a good option, but if I had to pay the City Entrance Tax just so that I could go and pay even more money just to sit around in an inn doing absolutely nothing productive, then that is what I would call a waste. Also, even if I were to warp to Palmasque during the nightly hours, there is no telling that it would be one hundred percent safe for me, because there is always a chance that someone could have been passing by at the moment of my emergence from the warp portal, which would end up causing quite an uproar, I am sure.