Hakai no Miko

"Hey, Mother. What are you doing?

I'm dreaming.

The Ethereal Horse thought so.

"This is... I taught you how to make them at the women's club."

It is in the kitchen of a home in the nostalgic modern Japan that the mother who answers so stands. So the mother was stirring the liquid in a ball of stainless steel with a foam.

My mother slaps me in the head lightly as I try to peek into the ball.

"Here, be careful because it's dangerous. When this gets to me, it's gonna be a big deal."

What the mother had in her hand was a stainless steel measuring cup with a handle on it. From earlier on, her mother had poured something from there into the ball.

"What's that?

"This is a pale horse."

◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆

…… ...... hmm! Soma, aren't you there?! "

The Ethereal Horse woke up to the sound of a knock on the door and the voice of Shemr calling his name.

"Hey, Soma. We're going in! - What, were you even taking a nap?

"Is something wrong?

Asked Shemr, who opened the door and came in, as she rubbed her sleeping eyes on the bedside.

"Oh. We got a problem. Fucking grandpa's eating hoists on the dwarves."

The only thing Sheml calls his fucking grandfather is Solon.

Besides, I didn't know you were eating a hoist, it doesn't seem like a joke.

It was the Dwarves' workshop in the city that was guided by a hasty, self-appointed Ethereal Horse. The Ethereal Horse, taught there were the Solons, opened the door vigorously and went inside.

And the Ethereal Horse flashes.

"In the afterlife. I feel sorry for the old man, so help me!"

"You thief. I don't know how!

"Beat him to death! Beat him to death!"

"Even a hanging neck. Yeah!

What was inside the workshop was literally a hoisted solon.

It is hung from the beam of the workshop as if it were a minotaur, on top of being tied to a joke with rope. What surrounds such a solon are the murderous dwarves. They held a stick in their hand, and it is still a sword screen that could slaughter Solon.

"Nah... what happened...?

"Oh, boy, help me!"

Solon, who noticed a pale horse leaking his voice in vain, begged for his life in a pitiful voice.

◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆

"Well, this is Dwarf's secret medicine. It's not a glass medicine."

Back in the room where Ethereal Horse presents his chemical experiments at the orphanage, Solon stared at what was in his hand in a good mood.

What was in its hands was a vial containing powder of trona stone that had creaked from Dwarf's workshop.

Glass production is the secret of Dwarves. In the centre of the continent we also hear rumors that he heard the method of making glass by torture from the Dwarves of prisoners, but still in the West glass is the exclusive patent of the Dwarves.

Solon, proud of his intellectuals, was more interested in glass than ever before. This is all the more so if it is also known as a secret drug in the manufacture of glass.

"Well, what kind of medicine is this?"

I'll smell it first. But I can't feel anything that smells like it. Then pinch a small amount into your mouth to make sure it tastes good.

If you look at it from a modern Japanese, it's a way of discerning what you think is dangerous. In times when chemistry is underdeveloped, however, it is a very normal way of determining substances by taste.

"Uhm, that's bitter..."

When it was in my mouth for a while, I felt bitter. Solon spits it out immediately and then rinses his mouth with water.

"Well, what shall I try next..."

In the meantime, Solon tried dissolving his secret medicine in water. Then, the secret medicine quickly dissolves in water, leaving no cusp. Plus Solon tries to spin that solution with a metal stick, heat it up, breathe it in, and so on. But no particular unusual changes took place.

"Hmm. I'm not putting stones in it or melting it. Nothing's gonna change."

Solon began to get bored with the lack of much change.

At that time, what caught Solon's eye was a large barrel containing lime water used by Ethereal Horse to test carbon dioxide the other day. Lime water with visible reactions has been Solon's favorite since then. Try things and Solon will try to put lime water in a solution of trona stone.

"... oh, whoa! What is this?!"

Then there was a dramatic change. A solution of trona stone mixed with a clear lime water supernatant clouded bright white. Furthermore, the solon pours in lime water, but the lime water becomes cloudy from the insert.

That was a more dramatic reaction than breathing in. Solon, concerned about that reaction, keeps putting more and more lime water on track. At last, however, the liquid was about to overflow from the vessel, so on the contrary, I poured a solution of trona stone into a barrel with lime water. Still, all the lime water went white.

"Oh, this is amazing!

Solon wondered what the hell this white thing was.

I just did some filtration and tried to find out what was white, but there is too much fluid to do the filtration. So Solon prepared a large pot and decided to boil it. Where the liquid volume has concentrated to some extent over several hours, Solon filters the solution. Since there was no place to store the liquid, put it back in the pan again. Then Solon washed the filtered white powder well with water before licking one.

"Uh-huh. I just feel the same when I breathe in."

Solon is discouraged just hoping he can do something more different.

It was an unfortunate result, but we have to hide the evidence before the Dwarves can find us. When I saw the pan I put back in the furnace to clean it up, I noticed something was made in the liquid that boiled down further while I was leaving it.

It's not like white powder that you can breathe into lime water. It's like a salt crystal that can boil seawater.

"What is this?

In the meantime, Solon did another filtration of the liquid in the pan and tried to take it out. Thanks to the simmer earlier, the liquid volume is also less and the filtration ends easily. Then, to ascertain the taste of the resulting crystalline form, the water wash was done first.

"What, disappeared?!"

The white powder that could be made from lime water was ok to wash with water, but when the crystalline one was added water, it quickly melted away. I wonder if it was really salt, I put a few remaining crystals in my mouth, but the bitterness spreads in my mouth, not salt.

"What the hell was this guy..."

He was a solon with his neck tilted, but that's when the door of the room was slammed rampantly and he heard anger.

"Open it, Solon! We know you stole our secret medicine!

Solon escaped through the window, as a shedding.

◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆

"- And, well, that's not true."

Though he escaped the scene, he was eventually caught by the Dwarves, and thus hung from the beam, Solon explained how he had been without being evil.

"If they had stolen our Dwarf's secret medicine, it would have been a rule to hang them, surround them all, and beat them with sticks."

But when the Dwarves wrapped their arms around him to slap him, Solon said that killing himself would cause him trouble. For that reason, Doverlyn explained, this is how it comes to mind.

Sure, Solon is right, he's an orphanage teacher who's finally found. It is definitely a difficult person to teach the orphans the letters.

The Ethereal Horse has no choice but to take Solon for granted.

Doverine and the others cannot be taken for granted by the great Ethereal Horse. Doverlyn said, "Next time, I'm not gonna forgive you!" He threatened to free Solon. "

"Damn, I've had terrible eyes..."

Upon returning to the orphanage, the freed solon blurred as he tied up and rubbed his painful arm.

My body's savings are hurting because of the Dwarves tying me up for strength. Still, Solon returned to the orphanage lab in an attempt to clean up just the experimental apparatus he had left on the run.

I kept the big pot on fire, but fortunately it didn't seem to catch fire. The furnace fire has already gone out, too. Solon was surprised when he peered into the large pot, thinking that the rod liquid would have gone away from boiling too much.

"What is this...?

At the bottom of the large pot, where all the moisture had evaporated, something odd remained.

It is neither a powder like lime nor a crystal like salt. It is a white mass, such as melted sugar once and then solidified.

It doesn't seem to be the powder of trona stone you've stolen or the lime powder you've added yourself. To find out who it is, Solon smashes a small chunk of white. At this time, a small shard of crushed white mass rolled into my sleeve, but Solon didn't notice.

Solon throws one of his crushed little shards into his mouth.

"... that's bitter"

When I tasted it in my mouth for a while, I felt bitter.

The trona stones that dull from the dwarves were also bitter, but I feel more bitter than that. And even though I rinsed my mouth with water, I felt the discomfort persist in my mouth.

"Ahhh. It's weird in my mouth. Do you want to clean it up after you re-mouth it with booze?"

Yes, the blurry solon puts the cleanup behind him and goes for a drink.

But there was also discouragement that I couldn't get the same reaction I thought from the powder of Trona stone, and Solon, who stuck over the liquor cup, got drunk and never cleaned up that day.

And the day after that, Solon, who visited us again to clean up, will be astonished.

Surely as of last night, the pot should have dried to a crisp, white chunks. However, there was still water in the pan in front of me, and the white mass was about to melt in half.

"What the...?

Solon pinches a white chunk half-melt at the bottom of a large pan with his fingers. Then I felt a null feeling in my finger belly. I tried to wash it off with water, but its stuffiness doesn't quite fall off.

Solon was twisting his neck wondering what this white lump was, but that's when I realized I had a tingling pain in my right hand. Yesterday, when I was tied up by the Dwarves, I wondered if they even wore scratches, turning my sleeves around.

"What is this, huh?!"

Solon's shout-out of amazement echoed in the orphanage.

◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆

"What is it now, Mr. Solon?

As well as yesterday, the Ethereal Horse, who was beaten up where he was taking a temporary sleep during his administration and was called up to the orphanage, said in a slightly less blurry tone. Exactly. If they make a scene for two days in a row and interrupt my hypnotic sleep, I'll be in a bad mood.

But a curious Ethereal Horse. Curiosity over you prevails if you ask me why I was summoned because I had something strange.

"Is this that white chunk..."

Indeed, Solon was right, it was at the bottom of the pan with a white chunk about to melt. The look of it makes me think of a dehumidifier that has inhaled too much moisture.

Aside from the fact that the Ethereal Horse was really dry last night, Solon affirmed for sure.

Then I look up and wonder if even the water dripped from the hole drilled into the roof to drain the smoke directly above the furnace, but there is no sign of that. Besides, I didn't remember it raining last night.

Ethereal horses try to rub the solution in the pan against their index fingers and together with their thumbs. Then, indeed, Solon was right, it felt null. But its stuffing is not like oil. There is no stickiness in the liquid itself, and I feel that it feels subtly different.

"Look at this guy. Apparently, it had shards on it, but that's how it got."

When Solon rolled his sleeves, there were signs of burns about the size of a bean grain on the back of his forearm.

"It's not just a burn. I felt the heat at all. However, when I noticed the soreness and soreness, it turned out like this."

Sure, there's something wrong with burns. It's like being groped out, with a pocket of holes. But if you burn so deep through the tissue, you can't possibly not feel the heat when you take it. Besides, it looks more like it melted than burns when you look at the wound...

"This one, Ethereal Horse -"

At that time, the mother's voice rises behind the brain of the Ethereal Horse.

"Huh?! Hey, wait a minute! Melt? Fingers null? Melt your body? That's not true...!

Ethereal horses unwittingly raise their voices of surprise.

"What's up, Soma? Do you have any idea?

"Shemr, hurry up and get it from the kitchen!

The Ethereal Horse asks Shemr to go get something. In the meantime, the Ethereal Horse began to whirl with a small amount of water in the pan. After a while, when all the white lumps dissolve in the water, the Ethereal Horse tries to touch the bottom of the pan.

"After all, it's getting hot"

Shemr brought a small pot where he grew more and more convinced by the heat transmitted to his hands.

"Soma, is this what you want?

The offered kettle is filled with loose yellowbrown liquid.

"Yeah. Thanks!

The words of gratitude were there, too, and the pale horse received from Shemr to take the kettle.

"Beast lady. What the hell is that?

Heard that something strange had been created from the powder of Trona stone, Doverin asks Shemr, who, like the Ethereal Horse, had come to the spot out of curiosity. Shemr also has no idea what the Ethereal Horse does every time. Answer with a face like your hand.

"It's just oil. - What the hell are you going to do with that..."

In the meantime, the Ethereal Horse slowly pours in the solution dissolved with white chunks, stirring the oil in the kettle. Then the oil became cloudy. That's exactly the reaction the Ethereal Horse was expecting. I would have to add the right amount if I were to, but I don't know that, so anyway, I add all the solution and then keep spinning even cloudy oil.

"Can we just stir it around? All right, I'll take your place."

The pale horse, whose hands are gradually getting stuck, replaces the shemur he sees with oil.

Next to Shemr scratching the oil on her own behalf, the Ethereal Horse squeaked bumps as she leaned her neck.

"I feel more drooling, but I guess not? Or because of different percentages? What can I do to make it react quickly... it's time to clean the waste oil with salt, and, uh..."

There must have been a way to speed up the reaction. A pale horse who wants to know the results as soon as possible desperately tries to remember what her mother did say she would add something. The Ethereal Horse, who was twisting his head about what it was, suddenly opened his eyes.

"That's right. Alcohol for disinfection!

I remembered what my mother was adding and let my face shine. But deny it immediately.

"No, no, there's nothing like that in this world, and I'm not going to make it now..."

The Ethereal Horse shook his head and tried to shake off what came to mind, and what was on the hips of Fufu Dvarin caught his eye.

"Mr. Doverlyn, give me this!

"Ma, wait! Lord Soma, that's mine...!

The Ethereal Horse, who snatched the skin bag away faster than Dvarin could stop, opens its mouth and smells the smell to see what's in it.

"Lord Soma! That's not my wine!

The alcohol concentration is so thin that it is not comparable to alcohol for disinfection, but it would still work somewhat.

A screaming voice shook off the cessation of Dvarin, and the Ethereal Horse quietly poured the wine into the oil that Shemr was stirring.

…… Oh, it's getting kind of cheap. "

Once a small amount of wine has been added, the cloudy oil becomes even more white, increasing the resistance felt in the hands of the spinning shemle.

Then I had Shemr stir it for another while before the Ethereal Horse observed the oil. The loose yellow-brown oil is white and feels like paper clay with a watery pale yellow-white color.

When the pale horse took the pale yellow and white one with his fingertips, he clutched his hands together with a small amount of water.

In the palm of my hand, I feel null, but no further change.

Was it my mistake?

When the pale horse despaired, and stopped his hand. Between the slightly open palms, I notice a thin film stretching out in rainbow color.

That was exactly what the Ethereal Horse was expecting.

…… It's the membrane of Chavon!

Peek into Shemr's holding pot.

"Soap. The soap is ready! Definitely!"

And look at the white chunks that I've just split up.

"Is this caustic soda?!"

Causal soda - or sodium hydroxide. It is a common drug used in modern Japan to make handmade soap at home.

But it's premature to judge that.

Sodium hydroxide is not the only substance that combines the seaworthiness of absorbing and dissolving moisture in the air with the alkalinity of soaping oils and fats. This is also true, for example, of sodium carbonate, the main component of trona stone. Ethereal horses' mothers only made soap with sodium hydroxide, which is easy to soap, so Ethereal horses didn't know, but sodium carbonate can also do soap.

In fact, in the Middle Ages there were times when salt plants were burned ashes - barillas and trona stones themselves were used to make soap.

But in conclusion, the guess of the Ethereal Horse was in the middle.

The method Solon did by chance was a lime method of reacting calcified lime with an aqueous solution of sodium carbonate to produce sodium hydroxide.

"Soap! I can make soap!

The Ethereal Horse makes his body tremble small with joy. That was such a reaction that even Shemr would retire. But that's not in the eyes of the Ethereal Horse right now.

What the Ethereal Horse couldn't stand in this world was a meal first. And secondly, it was a hygienic environment.

The meal is managed thanks to Zoan's spicy dishes, but the problem is the sanitary environment. Anyway, there's dirt rolling all over the city, and if you put it in the back alley a little bit, it's a bad environment where the smell of manure is puffy. To the Ethereal Horse, who lived in a sanitary city in modern Japan, it was not a hoard.

However, it is the bath that the Ethereal Horse was most unbearable in the sanitary environment.

In this world where fuel and true water are still precious, there is not much habit of bathing. The extent to which people in general occasionally bathe in rivers and springs. Even wealthy ordinary people wash their bodies about a few times a week with boiled water. Also, when it comes to bathing in this world, it's a steam bath where you water baked stones and store steam in a room, or it's a luxury that even royal marquis nobility rarely can use.

No matter how much you are a bath lover Japanese, you can't squander precious fuel just for your own bathing. Every day, I had a cup of hot water divided from the kitchen, so I had to wash my body.

But even if you wash it with water or hot water every day, your body's sebum isn't easy to shed. So is the dirt on your clothes. Recently, I've gotten used to it, but if I look closely at my body, I can't help but dress as unclean in modern Japan.

But with soap, we can at least have a cleaner life now!

The eyes of the pale horse that thought so glowed.

"Hey, Mr. Solon! Can you make this in bulk? Or make it!

Pushed by the sword curtain of the Ethereal Horse, the solon just goes awry.

"This guy happened to be something..."

He was a solon who tried to say he didn't know if he could make it, but to the awesome grin of the Ethereal Horse, the words grab him in the back of his throat. Solon offered a substitute victim to escape the pale horse spearhead.

"Uh, bye. If you want to make it, if you don't have Dwarf's secret medicine, you can't make it in the first place. Ask Dwarf first."

Unexpectedly, it was a doverlin who tried to protest not to talk to me, but the Ethereal Horse's neck made a grinning noise, and I unwittingly lag behind even though it was directed this way.

"No, that, Lord Soma. It's our Dwarf's secret medicine..."

"You can share, can't you?

Words are polite, but what is contained therein is the very imposition without saying whether or not.

But you can't just offer Dwarf's Secret Medicine as a treat. To Doverlin, who doesn't quite shake his neck vertically, the Ethereal Horse comes up with a replacement condition. When I made the soap earlier, I remembered it with disinfectant alcohol.

Says the Ethereal Horse with a grin on his face.

"Mr. Doverlyn. I have a good story to tell..."

Later, Dvarin said:

I guess the grin that comes to mind when demons seduce people is something like that.

◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆

"That smells amazing..."

The Ethereal Horse said so in a newly built workshop off the city.

"Let's have no choice. Cow fat was the best."

Solon, who was tasked with making soap, first experimented with several kinds of oils and fats, and found that the cows and fats were the most foamy and dirty. Fortunately, cattle livestock is currently recommended in the Sorbiant Plains as a rental fee for land to Zoan, so it was essential for cow fat.

Large quantities of soap were produced from cow fat collected from pioneering villages on such plains and from sodium hydroxide made by Solon from Trona stone.

"Ah, no. The smell is creeping in the back of my nose."

After completing his inspection of the soap factory, the Ethereal Horse goes outside and mourns so. I also agreed with the smell in that workshop, just Shemr. You won't know what you smell now.

"Wow, Lord Soma!

There came a doverlin with a small vessel in one hand for a small run. There's a full smile on his face, and his voice plays. To the Ethereal Horse, who asks what happened, Dvarin offers the little vessel in his hand all the time.

"Well, drink this"

filled with a small vessel was a clear liquid. The Ethereal Horse, who had been in the hot soap workshop until earlier, also had a dry throat, so thank you very much.

But as soon as I took a sip, the Ethereal Horse erupted the liquid violently and coughed up.

"You! What did you give Soma to drink?!"

The Ethereal Horse held one arm up as he coughed up and controlled the sheml that would have been eaten by Dvarin, wondering if he had even given him a drink of something weird.

After a while, the pale horse, whose cough finally subsided, stares with astonishment at the liquid that remained slightly in the vessel.

"This, distilled liquor?

"That's right. As Lord Soma taught me, it's made by boiling liquor and cooling the steam that sometimes comes out."

That's what I came up with when I tried to add alcohol to speed up the soaping of oil. At that time, I was in a hurry to replace it with Dvarin wine, but it would be easy to make a high concentration of alcohol. You can distill the liquor. I mean distilled liquor.

Think of it, I've never heard of strong liquor like distilled liquor in this world.

Weak in alcohol and not liking it, Ethereal Horse has never remembered distilled liquor before, but as with many fantasy pieces, I wondered if Dwarves in this world who love liquor so much could use it as a condition of exchange for secret medicines.

However, I am surprised by Dwarf's obsession with liquor, which he said had only conveyed the knowledge he had heard at the whisky factory where his father had taken him on a tour, but had made distilled liquor in such a short period of time.

"The strength of burning this throat is good, but the flavor is not one now. It's so pointy and tasteless."

Having said that, he seemed to like the intense alcohol irritation not found in this world. His face is already stained bright red, and he looks like he has mouthed a good amount of distilled liquor.

"Then you can put it in a wooden barrel and put it to bed."

"Oh my...!

"They say that what you put to bed for ten or twenty years will taste better and be very expensive."

When he was in modern Japan, Aoima said, recalling that his mother was lumpily mad at him for hiding expensive whiskey that his father had been buying for decades.

But Doverlyn hadn't heard it until the end. I move those short legs in a doozy fashion and they run away at great speeds.

Besides, Ethereal Horse and Shemr had been looking at each other's faces for a while, but were concerned about Dvarin's reaction and decided to chase them.

The Ethereal Horse rushed into the workshop where he was making distilled liquor following Dvarin, flashing.

Inside the workshop, the Dwarves, already intoxicated, were rolling like tuna fried on a hill. Others flock their cups to large distillation devices like metal triangular hats in large pans. It's like zombies flocking to their victims.

"You guys! Stop swallowing! Hurry, make a barrel and put it in!

Running into a workshop where alcohol drifts, Dvarin kicks his countrymen in, yelling and scattering so much.

Looking up at such dwarves and the mountains of empty beer barrels piled high on the walls of the workshop, Shemr snapped like a shudder.

"Totally. How much beer did you use, these guys..."

But even though there's no response from the Ethereal Horse I was hoping for, Shemr looks back with a suspicious face.

…… So, soma?! "

There, the pale horse was upside down. Swallow distilled liquor, albeit just a sip, and the Ethereal Horse, which has run so far, was originally vulnerable to alcohol, and all at once the drunkenness turned.

When Shemru changes his blood phase, he wakes up and shakes the Ethereal Horse that was falling.

"Hold on, Soma! Somebody get some water! Bring me some water!"

In his hazy consciousness, the Ethereal Horse thought that if he was rocked any more, he would give out the contents.

◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆

The soap and distilled liquor thus made spreads to the centre of the western part of the continent over several years.

But it will also make the western realm, which has not previously been viewed as an undisclosed barbaric land, point its gaze at the centre of the continent.

That Great War, the harshest, most abominable, for the Son of Destruction, Soma Kisaki, which will happen later than this, and will cause his name to be bombarded throughout the continent and engraved with fear in history.

That's why we call that harsh battle also known as the "soap war".