novelraw Chapter 128
Chapter 128
Chapter 128
Just as everyone expected, the Ape Tribe visited Rotsy.
As that rabbit fellow had predicted, they brought several wagons loaded with alcohol.
“Wow, you really are human. You must be the Guide of the Rabbit Tribe. I’m the Chieftain of the Ape Tribe, Mondel.”
Perhaps because it was our first trade, the Ape Tribe’s chieftain himself came here.
From the start, his energy was something else. The moment he arrived, he grabbed my hand firmly and shook it vigorously—he seemed quite a lively fellow.
Was it because they were brewers?
It really looked like he’d already had a drink or two before coming.
“Come on now, have a taste of this first. It’s our tribe’s proud creation.”
After greeting us, the Ape Tribe Chieftain confidently opened a cask.
It was a wooden barrel, much like an oak cask.
It seemed that even here, alcohol was stored in such wooden containers.
Regardless of reason, offering a drink first—now that was the proper attitude of a true drinker of this age.
“Wow, that aroma…”
Once opened, a rich, sweet fragrance tickled my nose.
Even without tasting it, I could tell.
This was something truly exceptional.
“This is amazing.”
Its taste was every bit as good as its aroma.
Sharp yet sweet—it suited my taste far better than the fine wine I had at the Lord’s Council.
Yuria, who was tasting it with me, seemed equally satisfied.
“As expected of monkeys. You can’t beat this.”
In fact, I’d heard that the lords in the Levelium Region valued this kind of alcohol more than wine from the south.
A kind of hidden gem known only to those in the know?
As expected from wealthy lords—they really knew how to enjoy the finer things.
“But this—is it really wine?”
“There are many kinds, you see. Honestly, even we’re not exactly sure what it is.”
“The one I just had tasted like wine, though.”
“That one? Let’s see… Ah, that’s made from wild grapes mixed with a few other things. Most of our brews are like that. We don’t make it with just one ingredient. The mix changes depending on what’s available, so the flavor varies a bit each time. Of course, the quality’s always top-notch.”
Apparently, there were many wild grapes growing near their village.
The grapes were small but highly resistant to cold and very sweet, which made them perfect for brewing alcohol.
Since the north of Rotsy was an extremely cold region, it was fascinating that grapes even grew there.
Maybe it was a different kind of grape entirely from the ones I knew.
‘It might just look like a grape but be a completely different fruit. After all, this is another world.’
Still, the fact that they made this from wild fruits rather than cultivated ones was quite surprising.
So this was basically a fantasy version of homemade fruit wine?
Even though they made it rather casually, the quality was incredibly high—these people were truly master craftsmen.
“Growing fruit? That’s too much hassle. We just make do with what’s around.”
Maybe they were just lazy drunkards.
“The Merchant Group bought tons of these. Every batch we sent sold out instantly.”
“So, did they pay you fairly for it?”
“Heh, why ask something like that? Business is business, you know?”
That probably meant they were underpaid.
Honestly, this side could be just as sly.
Beastmen cheating other beastmen—there really wasn’t a single trustworthy one among them.
Anyway, since even the Level Merchant Group traded with them regularly, the quality clearly had no issues.
“It was amazing. My mouth’s truly blessed.”
“Right? That’s why we sell alcohol to humans. Those idiots think all liquor tastes the same.”
“Alcohol is alcohol, isn’t it? What’s so special about it?”
“See? See? That’s exactly what I mean. You guys can just drink the leftovers we set aside.”
They really seemed more like brewing artisans than merchants.
Hearing a simple compliment made them beam like children.
Apparently, if you sold alcohol to beastmen, they wouldn’t even recognize how valuable it was.
While scolding Rudelrof relentlessly, they still seemed to get along quite well.
It seemed the Ape Tribe and Lion Tribe had long been on friendly terms.
Maybe he just used this trade as an excuse to visit his beastman friends.
“What’s in this box?”
After watching their banter for a while, I turned to inspect the wagons.
Most of them were filled with wooden barrels of alcohol, but here and there were some boxes mixed in.
Looked like they’d brought a few other things besides liquor.
“That’s soap. We just make it whenever we’re bored, but beastmen can’t get enough of it.”
“Oh, soap. So most beastmen use the soap made by the Ape Tribe?”
“That’s right, friend. In fact, our soap’s even better than the human kind. Our Lion Tribe gets all our soap from them too.”
“Is that so?”
Our territory also bought soap from outside.
It was one of those items grouped under daily necessities.
We used to trade with the Level Merchant Group, but now we got it from Haken.
Soap was also made in the alchemy workshop, but since it required quite a bit of work, it wasn’t something we produced ourselves.
The workshop was already busy enough making potions and mana crystals.
“We could probably get our soap from them too. Or maybe sell it to other beastman tribes. By the way, where do you get the oil?”
“Oil? Up north of the Monster Mountains, there’s this huge flower. Its seeds are packed with oil—you just press them, and it flows right out. Works great.”
“Really?”
Honestly, I was almost more interested in the oil than the soap.
In our territory, we extracted oil from peanuts, but consumption had been rising rapidly lately—it was getting worrisome.
Rabbit Fry had become quite the popular dish.
To make soap the traditional way, you needed oil, so if they could mass-produce soap, they must have had a steady oil source.
But when I heard they got it from a plant-type monster, I didn’t really know what to say.
‘A sunflower knockoff, maybe?’
The Fallen Yggdrasil had been a plant-type monster.
The northern parts of the Monster Mountains were crawling with strange flora like that.
But I didn’t know there were flowers that produced oil.
Soap was still acceptable, but using oil from monsters for cooking… yeah, no thanks.
I decided to pass on that.
“But this one here…”
“Oh, that? That’s beer—or something like it. Low-alcohol drinks need special care in storage, you see. That’s what this is for.”
Among the barrels on the wagon were a few familiar-looking ones.
Barrels made from Metal Slime.
Judging from their size, they must have been made by merging several Metal Slimes together.
They were several times larger than the ones the Cat Tribe had brought before.
However, they had attached it so precisely that it hardly showed from the outside.
“Did the Won Tribe learn how to use metal slimes?”
“No way, we can’t do that either. That one was made by the West Tribe friends.”
“Ah, the West Tribe.”
If even the dexterous Won Tribe couldn’t make this container, then was the metal slime the West Tribe’s exclusive specialty?
That was intriguing in its own way.
‘Also, what on earth were the West Tribe people doing that they were involved everywhere?’
I had only met two tribes, but both of them were trading with the West Tribe.
And they were all using slime containers made by the West Tribe.
It seemed inter-tribal exchange was fairly active.
Maybe the West Tribe were big players in the beastmen distribution business(?).
“Ah, the West Tribe. Those guys were truly free spirits.”
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t have fixed territories. They moved in clan units and lived by drifting from place to place.”
All the tribes I had met so far had their quirks, but the West Tribe were far stranger than the others.
They wandered around without a proper base.
And they had been doing this since before the Great Cataclysm — that really made me think.
‘What, gypsies? Or nomads? Seriously, there were some really weird people around.’
Still, the West Tribe hadn’t always lived as wanderers.
“They originally lived with the Bear Tribe. There wasn’t a beastman who disliked the West Tribe, but they were closest with the Bear Tribe.”
“The Bear Tribe?”
“Right. Your ancestors, and the Bear Tribe who drove out the Boar Tribe together — that Bear Tribe. Well, they perished gloriously after the last battle.”
The West Tribe that had lived with the Bear Tribe parted ways with them ahead of the fight against the Boar Tribe that marked the Bear Tribe’s end.
After that, they hadn’t settled in one place and had led a roaming life.
When the Great Cataclysm happened, the dangers of wandering increased, so the West Tribe’s population had shrunk a lot.
I only wondered why they still hadn’t settled down.
“I’d heard somewhere they were looking for something.”
“Really?”
“They often traded with the Rat people, too. There were rumors like that.”
“What could be so important that they were….”
Well, there must be a reason that important.
Maintaining a nomadic life even through the Great Cataclysm’s chaos was no ordinary thing.
‘I wasn’t sure if it was more important than life itself, though.’
Anyway, beastmen’s ways of thinking were truly baffling.
The trade with the Won Tribe had been very satisfactory.
We had received lots of alcohol and soap and, in exchange, gave them horned rabbit meat, jerky, furs, and salt.
And I gained one more thing.
While checking the wagon I met some Won Tribe warriors, and they were using crossbows instead of bows.
Those crossbows were of far better quality than I had expected.
Although aura use favored bows over crossbows, in terms of sheer power the Won Tribe’s crossbows had some advantages.
Considering the comparison was against Horn Bows made from Minota horn from Mount Haken, their craftsmanship was astonishing.
‘And the weapon quality was excellent. The Lion Tribe was fairly good at working iron, but these were a step above.’
If the Won Tribe made many weapons using the Lion Tribe’s high-quality steel, that could be useful, so I asked for cooperation, and the Won Tribe readily agreed.
It was very rare for beastmen to go to war, and when they did it was often because the Boar Tribe was involved, so this wasn’t such a strange development.
The weapons we co-produced would ultimately be used against the Empire bastards or monsters,
“But the Cow Tribe and the Horse Tribe didn’t send merchant groups after all?”
However, now that the Won Tribe and the Cat Tribe had both left, the Cow Tribe and the Horse Tribe still hadn’t sent anyone.
I could understand the Horse Tribe being far away, but it didn’t feel good that the Cow Tribe, which was closer than the Won Tribe, had gone silent.
“The cows don’t lack much.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, they’re mostly self-sufficient.”
“Huh, beastmen can be self-sufficient?”
The Cow Tribe’s settlement lay on the plains northward from Levelium.
It was a rare fertile land where crops could be grown in the northern part of the Ribella Peninsula.
And the Cow Tribe were capable of farming, so they produced enough grain to have a surplus.
Of course, to a beastman grain was only emergency food eaten when there was no meat, it seemed.
“Also, there weren’t many of them, but they kept livestock? Mostly chickens, which was a bit disappointing, but still not an easy feat.”
“Wow, that’s really something. Beastmen can rear livestock?”
“I thought the cows were pretty impressive, too.”
I could understand why the Cow Tribe had little to complain about.
Unlike the Lion Tribe, which could only live on meat, the Cow Tribe could sustain themselves somewhat on grain.
And if they kept some livestock, even on a small scale, they were not a tribe to be dismissed.
“But they couldn’t get salt, right?”
However, even the Cow Tribe had no way to obtain salt.
There were no salt mines in the north of the Ribella Peninsula, and the Cow Tribe’s base wasn’t on the sea.
But it was hard to understand why they seemed so relaxed about it.
“Maybe they thought their salt would never run out.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Cow Tribe were the most passionate belligerents. Maybe they planned to drive out the Empire bastards before their salt ran out.”
“I’ll be back before this drink cools down!”
What kind of line was that?
Apparently there were some lunatics possessed by the official rhetoric.