FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife-Chapter 30: Bedtime worries

"Charcoal, huh?"

With a legitimate topic to talk about and thus take my mind off the fact I was now sitting on the same bed as an impossible, blue-eyed, divine beauty, what other choice did I have if not to go all in on it?

"It’s actually quite a simple stuff. An altered form of wood that can serve as a good replacement for coal. And while it’s not coal..." I allowed my voice to trail off before giving the Saintess a knowing look.

"If it’s good enough and as cheap as you make it out to be, people like Greg will jump on it like hungry wolves upon fresh prey," she finished up my sentence for me, proving that she understood my point.

"The thing is," I shook my head, "it’s really not that hard to make it. Heck," I held my breath for a bit while looking down, "no matter how hard I think about it, I can’t imagine how you guys don’t know about it yet!"

It didn’t take much to figure out the secret of charcoal production. And the very fact that I could execute the simplest method I was aware of with just a shovel, a bunch of wood, something to start a fire and then the very same dirt I would dig out with said shovel?

With that fact in mind, there were only two... No, three possible reasons for why its use wasn’t widespread by now.

First, against all the odds, no one in this world... or, at the very least, in this region, figured out its existence yet. Which would be weird, given how some of it was naturally made in the very same coalbed over which I roasted my coffee beans.

Second option was simple yet pragmatic – while people knew about charcoal, they had a different name for it. And it wasn’t widely used simply because it wasn’t good enough for them...

Which would be super weird, given all the advantages it had over coal, and how the process of making coked coal, which lacked the flaws raw coal had to bear, was pretty much the same as the process of turning wood into charcoal!

The third and the last option, one that I feared the most, was that making charcoal in this world was either completely impossible or simply much harder than it was on Earth.

There could be a wide variety of reasons for it.

Maybe the wood in this world was just so much wetter than the wood back on Earth that any attempt at heating the moisture out of it would end up with the degradation of the kiln, which, in turn, introduced oxygen into the mix and led to the materials burning rather than just cooking?

Or maybe the answer was as simple as it was annoying, limited to just one word – magic.

How it would stop the wood from forming charcoal, I had no idea. Just like I had no idea how magic worked in this world, even after the few times I glanced upon Saintess using it.

"If it’s not in use but could be, and it really is as easy to make as you make it out to be..." Saintess spoke out only to then lean to the back far enough she effectively fell with her back on the bed and pinned her eyes on the ceiling, "then you are about to become a rich, very rich man, you know?"

Even though she just introduced a male quality that pretty much defined a man’s value back on Earth, Saintess’s voice remained the same, as if the amount of money I had was of absolutely no significance to her.

And to be perfectly honest?

On one hand, I could perfectly understand why it was so. Just like Greg mentioned back in the smithy, not only was Saintess receiving some sort of allowance from whatever temple she belonged to, she also didn’t appear to care about money all that much in general – for what was money for her when she was perfectly satisfied with her frugal lifestyle?

On the other hand, however, this kind of an approach filled me both with a sense of extreme comfort, as if I no longer had to be the overachiever I had to be on Earth just to call myself a man rather than a loser. But at the same time, it also meant that the easiest, most straightforward way in which I could repay Selia for her help was never viable to begin with.

Or rather...

Sure, I could try to pay off my great debt to her with money, but I would only ever be seeking my own self-satisfaction by doing so rather than genuinely trying to repay her all the favors that she offered me.

"Doesn’t that mean that I’m only going to paint one hell of a target on my back?" I countered with the somber observation.

Sure, it felt nice to have a prospect of becoming rich easily. Sure, it would give me all the means I needed to dabble in producing other stuff, maybe even elevate me to a position where the locals cared about me due to the money my inventions would bring into the town.

What money wouldn’t change, though, was my near absolute lack of strength. And with it, with all this potential money now added to my name, I would turn from a mere ant no one gave two shits about, to one hell of a juicy target with no realistic means of keeping myself or my fortune safe from other people’s greedy hands!

"Haah..." I heaved a tired sigh.

Just thinking about the negative consequences of striking it rich was enough to exhaust all of the energy I still had left after all the hardships of escaping the death jungle and then reaching the town.

"So it seems, even if everything works how I hope it will, my life is only going to turn even more troublesome," I’ve muttered, falling back onto the bed’s cushion as a sense of powerlessness filled every last inch of my body.

’What am I even doing that for, then?’

I took in a deep breath before slowly sighing it out, focusing on the circulation of air in my lungs not to let the sense of desperation get to me.

"Then, what if it doesn’t work...?" Selia asked, turning over to the side and resting her head on her own, curled-up arm while locking her deep, blue eyes on the side of my face.

"What if it doesn’t work..." I’ve repeated after her, surprised just how enticing the perspective she offered appeared to my eyes.

But that was the weak part of me thinking.

Sure, getting rich would introduce even more danger to my life, but it was the first step I needed to take to change my current fate around.

I couldn’t ask Selia to keep me as her pet until the last of my days, could I? Sooner or later, I would have to graduate from her protection. And both for the sake of my personal honor and my pride as a man, I wanted to be able to pay her back for all the help she extended.

Then again, for that to happen, either tomorrow’s experiment had to work out or I would have to find another way of getting money without pissing off everyone around me... And I would better be quick about it!

Yet, even that thought couldn’t stop me from repeating Selia’s question both in my mind and then with my lips.

"What if it doesn’t work, I wonder...?"