Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

Master, we have received another message from Luke the broker. He says that he managed to win a successful bid for a Green Caterpillar Skill Crystal.

When we return home, there was a note stuck to our door, as per the usual custom when one of Lukes men was delivering the messages from him to us.

With Green Caterpillar Skill Crystal, Sherry is finally going to be able to make yet another Sacrificial Misanga for us. I believe that its going to be a third one. And if we count the Ring of Determination along with it, we will have four accessories total, one for each member of my Party.

Well, as good as that sounds, its nothing urgent that would require my immediate attention, so I think its going to be perfectly fine to leave the dealing with that matter until tomorrow, since today I dont feel like going to meet with Luke at all.

Now that the marinated Goat Meat should be all nice and ready, I dredged it in some of the Slime Starch and then proceeded to deep-fry it. What I want to prepare now is a Hokkaido cuisine dish called zangi, otherwise known tatsutaage, but the variant that Im preparing is not as red as the original is supposed to be. Mine is more crimson rather than red, and because of the fish sauce it became a little dark, which made it look not as visually pleasing, but when I actually tried it, it turned out that it tasted pretty well.

Well, not that the result could have been any different here, with the recipe for the entire dish being a rather simple one that does not leave too much space for things to actually go wrong, so I have to say that the end result proved to be maybe not ideal, but definitely satisfactory, even more so since even while still living back in Japan I cannot say that I had all that many opportunities to prepare tatsutaage all that often, and Im sure that even the Gods have not seen such splendid crimson, so this should definitely do for now.

On the morning of the next day, I made my way to the Quratars Merchants Guild to pick up the Green Caterpillar Skill Crystal after having breakfast while asking the girls to handle the dishes and cleaning duties while Im gone. I also told Sherry to hold on with her usual morning smithing session, since after I obtain the Skill crystal she will fuse an item with a Skill in it instead of wasting time on doing just regular items. I could have taken Sherry with me for this, but Im not going to do that because I dont want people at the Merchants Guild to find out that Sherry is a Master Smith and that Im having her fuse me the items with Skills in them with a guaranteed success rate practically free of charge.

Here, a Green Caterpillar Skill Crystal.

Indeed.

I had already confirmed that the Green Caterpillar Skill Crystal that Luke handed me was not a fake one before I received it from him. So far he hasnt tried to do anything funny with the things that I ordered him to get through auctions, but a part of me still cannot help it but get worried what is going to happen when he finally decides to try and to do me dirty and sell me something thats going to turn out fake. If it ever comes to that, I wonder what I am going to do and how exactly I am going to react?

However, since there is also the thing that he has established relations with the Duke of Hartz and the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy, I dont think that he might actually try to do something like that, or not openly at least, because if I ever decided to go public with the reveal that he was trying to scam me with fake items, that would certainly be quite a heavy blow to his reputation.

That, and he probably wants to avoid a situation where I would try to accuse him of trying to scam me and trying to get a compensation for the potential damage he might have caused out of him.

Well, considering the entire procedure and the lengths that he would have to go to in order to avoid being detected with such a scam, I say that producing fake items so that he could sell them to people would be highly inefficient for him, both from the financial and reputational standpoint, but I think that it might be a good idea to go and verify some of the items that hes handing me in the Merchant Guilds temple so that he wouldnt start getting any strange ideas about me or the reason for why am I so adamant in my refusal to use the identification services that the Merchants Guild is providing.

That, and I would also like to see how exactly does a temple associated with a Guild looks like from the inside at least once.

I also have something else for you. Here, these are the wanted posters prepared by the members of the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy that depict the Bandits that are rumored to have made their way into the Duchys Labyrinths. The Knight Order has entrusted me with their distribution on their behalf so that the news would reach as many people as possible. The Duke and Lord Gozer also wished me to tell you that they advise you to maintain the highest degree of caution if you do decide to go to the Hartz Duchys Labyrinths anyway.

With that said, Luke handed me a papyrus where the information about the Bandits was supposed to be written.

Although these were supposed to be wanted posters, the first thing that I noticed about them was that there was no drawings of how the Bandits in question looked like, which should be the main focus of a wanted poster taking up the majority of its space. Instead, the only thing that was placed on the Papyrus was what I assumed to be a description of the Bandits written in the Brahim language. So these are the wanted posters prepared by the members of the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy, huh? Its nice of them to have prepared them in order to warn people about the danger. If it wasnt for the fact that these wanted posters are now pretty much useless since the people described in them have already been slain by me.

Somehow this situation makes me feel bad for these guys, because essentially this means that because of me the Knights ended up wasting both money and precious resources on these posters..

No, now that I think about it, these wanted posters might not be wasted after all, because even if the main Bandits that the wanted posters have been pertaining to have been dealt with, there might still be some remnants of their group roaming about, plotting to get revenge for the demise of their comrades.

Anyway, I grabbed the Green Caterpillar Skill Crystal along with the wanted posters and then swiftly headed home, where

I pass the Misanga and the Skill Crystal to Sherry and tell her to fuse them together for me.

And what is that, master?

From what Luke told me, these are supposed to be the wanted posters for the Bandits that are now holed in the Labyrinths of Hartz Duchy that the members of the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy are distributing to warn people about the danger of going to the Duchys Labyrinths now.

I explain to them as I take out the wanted posters. Sherry glances at the posters from the side and reads their contents.

Oh. It says here that these wanted posters are for Heinz the Bandit and Simon the Mad Dog.

Did you just say Simon the Mad Dog?!

Suddenly, Roxanne cried out in surprise.

Well, yes, that is certainly what is written in here? Why do you ask? Do you know him?

Yes. He is a famous Pirate known widely to all of the members of the Wolfkin tribe. I heard he is supposed to be quite strong and second to none when it comes to the usage of a one-handed sword. However, I also heard that he suffered a defeat at someones hands in the time when I was still a little child, so at the very least hes not someone who could go around bragging how invincible he was. Actually, I would really like to fight against him sometimes if we ever got the chance to do so.