What was presented to my eyes seemed more like a feast than a regular meal. We were given a pot of soup, a large pile of bread and steamed vegetables, and a mountain of grilled meat. Assuming Amber eats as much as an average human, I think it would take two sittings for the two of us to finish all of this food.

"Come to think of it, this food looks the same as what humans eat."

"You can thank the Demon King for that."

"Hm?"

"He imposed a lot of new cultures and practices in his territory generations ago."

"Was the food before he imposed the changes bad?"

"I was told the food used to be very unappetizing."

Come to think of it, Amber did get me a delicious sandwich the day before. I guess it's also thanks to the Demon King that this sort of food was also available here.

Wait a minute… Does that mean humans are similar to demons, or vice-versa?

I'll probably have to ask Amber more about that some day. I hope it won't be some ridiculous answer like "humans are devilish creatures," or "a devil created humankind in its image."

"Well, let's eat while it's still hot."

"Okay, let's eat!"

I picked up a large piece of meat with my fork and took a bite. The roasted meat, which tasted like pork, was very juicy. It had a slightly sweet and smoky taste, reminiscent of barbecue grilled meat. I then picked up a loaf of bread to eat with the meat. It was still hot and had a very pleasant wheaty fragrance. When I took a bite on the soft, fluffy bun, I could feel the slight rich taste of butter.

"This food is good!"

Amber showed me her familiar warm smile again and giggled at my reaction to the food.

The food wasn't just similar to what humans ate, it was probably better. The serving size aside, if I could have food as good as this every day, I'd be elated.

It took us almost an hour to stuff ourselves full. Amber seemed to prefer eating meat over anything else, since she hardly touched the bread, vegetables, and soup. Regardless, her appetite was only slightly larger than mine. There was still over half the food left, so I asked for a few boxes to take it home. Hopefully it won't spoil by the time we have dinner.

"That'll be 1100 doviti, please."

That was surprisingly cheaper than I expected. With the profits for one day of work as promised by the commander, I wouldn't even need to worry about going hungry for an entire month! Well, more like a fortnight since I probably need to feed Amber too. She didn't ask for a salary for being my self-proclaimed tour guide and shop assistant, so the least I could do is cover her food and housing expenses.

Amber was probably still shaken by the wheelbarrow heavy-lifting this morning, so I sent her back with all the leftover food while I continued on with shopping for supplies.

I needed a couple specific monster drops and minerals to make magic scrolls and enchantment stones. Adventurer guilds didn't exist in the Demon King territory, so the only places where I could possibly find what I needed were souvenir and accessory shops.

Apparently, unintelligent species of monsters were bred in masses for exotic meats, milks, oils, and leathers. Well, they were exotic to me, at least. Consumption of these products among the locals is probably as normal as the consumption of chicken on the other side of the border. Anyhow, inedible byproducts such as bones, nails, oils, and so on were often sent to various souvenir and niche specialty shops.

However, due to certain special properties of monsters such as having wings, being made of liquid, or having an abnormal size, and sometimes due to poor cage and fencing construction, the monsters would occasionally break loose and run amok all over the world. Since these monsters would have had to feed on whatever they could find in the wild, their meat quality would then drop, resulting in very foul tastes and odors.

In any case, I've finally learned why the number of monsters in the world were still considerably high despite the fact adventurers were actively hunting them for quests, and also why nobody ever tries to consume monsters for food.

I had to go to three different shops to buy what I needed. Fortunately, they were all on the same street, so it didn't take too much time. What surprised me the most was the price on all of the items: I expected to have to pay 110000 doviti or so, but the total cost ended up being 43800.

The fact that all of the parts I needed came from monsters that were abundant in number meant that costs were less than a quarter of what I expected to pay due to oversupply. Some parts, such as tusks from a "deadly one-eyed boar", were so cheap that it was impossible to charge a single doviti unless one bought half a dozen. Speaking of which, that was what I apparently had for lunch. No wonder why it tasted like pork.

Nonetheless, the only expensive purchases I made were for a small quantity of gems and minerals.

All the materials I bought had to be grounded into powder form, and each item only needed a small amount, so I was able to bring all the items back to the shop in one trip. Without the wheelbarrow, of course. Someone lent me a rucksack.

"Do you want to come with me to buy the remaining supplies?"

"No, I refuse."

The main crafting materials were already purchased, so all that was left was to buy ink and paper stacks, 1000 empty bottles, and 12 crates. Since the orcs' and goblins' hands weren't gentle enough to be able to work with wood, the crates would have been made with thin stone slabs that were undoubtedly heavier than wood. I was hoping that Amber would come help me transport some of these items back to the shop, but she's still not happy about this morning it seems…

* * * * *

Two hours later, I finished finished my twelfth and final trip of transporting the items back to the shop. The plant seller was nice enough to let me borrow his wheelbarrow again, so it wasn't too difficult moving the bottles over to the shop selling crates for easier transportation…

Ah, who am I kidding, the wheelbarrow was almost useless because of its massive size. The only good thing about it was that it had wheels. There was nothing fun about hauling a monolith back and forth like that, especially when I could only hold onto one of the two handles and had to frequently stop to regain balance.

I really wanted to lie down for a while, but was already a quarter to four, so I had to immediately start working on commander Mavuto's large order. I'll treat myself to a relaxing hot bath later.

I spent the rest of the afternoon explaining to Amber the basics of magic crafting while brewing potions and making enchantment stones. She enthusiastically watched me work and meticulously took notes, so I think she should be able to qualify as a shop assistant after a couple days.

"These should be ready after brewing overnight. Now let's start on the magic scrolls."

Incantations and magic circles needed to be drawn on the papers, after which some mana converted to the elemental types needed to invoke the spell would be channeled in. The more advanced the spell was, the more complex the patterns that needed to be drawn, and the more mana that needed to be channeled in. There was also the risk of overloading the scroll with too much mana resulting in an explosion, so it was physically impossible to create scrolls for extremely powerful spells.

I was a archmage with an extremely large mana pool, so the amount of mana needed to create the scrolls wasn't an issue as long as I drank one or two mana recovery potions. The only problem was that I could only convert my mana for usage in fire-type spells, so there was a limit to the number of types of scrolls I could make. Thankfully, the scrolls that the commander requested were for explosive spells, which could be made through the use of either fire or wind magic.

I noticed something about Amber's notes after drawing on a couple scrolls.

"Could I see your notes for a bit?"

To my surprise, Amber had a knack for art. The incantations were nearly impossible to copy, but she copied down the magic circle perfectly.

"This magic circle is perfect! Could you help me draw that magic circle on the other papers? It would save me a lot of time."

I guess I could acknowledge her as a somewhat capable shop assistant now. I only needed to make thirty scrolls, but because of the intricate patterns, each of them required about five to ten minutes to make, about a third of which was spent on drawing the magic circle. With Amber's help, I was able to save about an hour of work.

"All that's left is for me to channel mana into these. Could you get me a mana recovery potion and heat up dinner in the mean time?"

"Sure."

I brought the scrolls with me outside to the store area since I didn't want to be distracted by the sounds coming from the kitchen. While channeling my mana into the scrolls, I looked at the window saw some familiar visages in the distance: it was the reptilian and harpy that I fought against in the morning. They were rummaging through the trash disposal site near the end of the street, seemingly trying to look for anything edible.

Come to think of it, after being forced to return millions of doviti earlier today, these two likely had no personal assets left. If one were also to consider how they were jobless and likely already spent a fair amount of what they extorted over the past month, then they were definitely in massive debt and thus had no money to buy food.

Watching them pick through food scraps for edible parts with nauseous looks on their faces made me feel slightly bad for them. They deserved it, though, so I tried my best not to pay attention to what they were doing. As long as I'm here, the two most likely won't try to cause trouble for anyone anymore. They might not be able to get proper jobs due to their bad history here, but I'm sure they'll be able to get by in another town or something.

I just need to ignore what I'm looking at. I definitely can't see them if I just turn around or look through the other window. Yep, totally not paying attention to them.

…

Damn it. I can't stop pitying these two for some reason…

"Hey, Amber!"

"Yes?"

She quickly ran out of the kitchen as I called.

"We probably can't finish all the food from lunch anyways, so could you wrap some of it up, leave it out in front of the store, and pull down the window blinds?"

She had a slightly confused look at first, but Amber seemed to have understood what I wanted to do after looking at the windows. She gave me a warm smile and said,

"You're a good person, Blaze."

She walked back into the kitchen and came out with a nicely wrapped package not long after.

The rest of the evening was rather uneventful. After treating myself to a nice relaxing bath, Amber taught me some basic characters of the demon language. It sort of felt like learning basic magic all over again, when I had to study all kinds of chants.

There were a total of 42 different characters in the language, each corresponding to a specific sound, as well as 10 numeric digits and some special accent and punctuation marks. Each symbol could be written without needing to lift the pen more than once, so the writing system is theoretically very easy to learn, and saves a lot of time when one needs to read and write. Since the sounds indicated by the characters corresponded to most basic sounds that one could make, the Demon language alphabet could also be used to transcribe other languages. It was thus normal for books to transcribe the common language in the Demon alphabet in order to get learners to become more familiar with that alphabet.

I still couldn't shake off the impression that it was created by some child drawing random scribbles on paper, though…

A diligent student could master the writing system of the demon language within a week, but I think it'll probably take me slightly longer than that since I dozed off from exhaustion after Amber left me alone in the study.