kscans

Chapter 175 - A Strange Tale of Night Bedding, 2. The Sleeping Bag (Part 2)

"Um... is this weird?"

"No... not weird, it’s just... I’ve never seen anything like it before."

Yuri tilted his head, thinking sleeping bags were synonymous with camping, but in truth, the history of sleeping bags was not that old. Much less in this world...

"Magical beasts can attack while we’re camped out. Bedding that you can’t jump out of immediately is a bit of a problem..."

"Ah... I see..."

And that was how it was.

At any rate, with that being the situation, and since Adon had already prepared bedding for him, Yuri thought the sleeping bag might be unnecessary... but the others did not seem to think so. They swarmed his sleeping bag, their curiosity on full display.

"Hey Yuri-kun, is this thing stuffed with something?"

The barrage of questions was kicked off by Dona. Cotton, which couldn't be grown domestically due to the climate, was rather expensive, so it hadn't become widespread among the populace. However, the existence of quilts, where a thin layer of cotton was sandwiched between two pieces of fabric and then stitched together, was known in this country. So, she guessed Yuri's sleeping bag was something similar, but she couldn't tell what was inside. The quilts Dona knew of had only a thin layer of cotton and weren't this fluffy. Besides, it felt unusually light for cotton.

"Oh, it’s bird feathers. From that ridiculously huge bird, the Lucca."

"""""The Lucca!?"""""

It was no wonder they all cried out in unison. In this country, the Lucca was considered a minor disaster. It was not uncommon for a small village to be wiped out by a Lucca attack. Unbeknownst to him, the abandoned village Yuri had found had met such a fate. For a twelve-year-old child to claim he had hunted a Lucca, it would be stranger not to be surprised.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I used the best parts for my futon at home, so what’s in here isn’t the highest quality... but it’s still pretty warm."

Yuri, however, had no idea just how vicious a magical beast the Lucca was, so he couldn't quite understand everyone's reaction. Its ability to fly with Wind Magic was a nuisance, but as long as you got the first strike and disrupted its magic field to take away its ability to fly, it was not that troublesome of an opponent. Above all, it was an opponent that he, with his bottom-tier combat abilities in the region, could manage. A seasoned adventurer should be able to defeat one without much trouble. Thanks to the letter from the god, Yuri’s belief that he was at the very bottom of the food chain remained as firm as ever.

"...Look... I’m not saying we can’t beat one... but it’s not that easy of an opponent, you know?"

"Is that so? But if you just disrupt the magic field for its Wind Magic, it can’t even fly properly."

Incidentally, Yuri failed to notice the contradiction in how he, whose official story was that he could only use Water and Earth Magic, could have disrupted a Wind Magic field.

"Just disrupting a Lucca’s magic is difficult for a normal magician..."

"No, once you get the hang of hunting them, it’s not that hard."

Everyone felt that saying anything more would be pointless. They decided to gracefully move on from this topic and return to the subject of the sleeping bag.

"So... you use Lucca feathers in your futon, Yuri-kun? And what’s in here is what was left over from that?"

"Yes. There's a decent amount of feathers overall, but there isn't that much of the best down... the fluffy stuff. So what I used in this is the part of the normal feathers with the quill removed."

It required a bit of ingenuity to keep the feathers from falling apart, but with the right processing, it provided sufficient insulation.

"Yuri-kun... could this... be made with the feathers of ordinary birds as well?"

It was Adon who latched onto this as a business opportunity, but the others were not uninterested either. A sleeping bag might be one thing, but an excellent insulation material was never something to have too much of.

"Of course. In fact, I don’t think people would normally use such a ridiculously large bird. I only used it because I happened to get my hands on one."

"I see... so he just happened to get his hands on one..."

"It’s not normally something one just ‘happens to get’..."

"No... perhaps it’s different on Salt-Sour Mountain..."

"Ah... things are probably quite different there compared to the world we live in down here..."