Spice and Wolf (2024) Ep 7 & 8

Episode 6

Holo is proving to be an incredibly helpful and witty business partner with Lawrence, as she has helped him avoid being exploited by a shallow scam of tilting the scales against him. However in turn she’s also very difficult to say no to, as Lawrence can’t help but indulge in spoiling her a bit. From the apples to the clothes and comb and now the oil to maintain her fur. However she isn’t going to just take it all for free at least, she’ll do her part of helping pay pack by doing her best to help him get the best deal he can.

After stopping by Poroson, Lawrence has sold his spices and obtained armour to look to sell in Ruvingeigen. A town known for it’s crusades. He has also seemingly heard of something potentially troubling about the — but we didn’t actually get to hear what was said. Just whatever it was, it was enough to make Lawrence think deeply about it, and choose not to mention it to Holo at the time. If he’s not saying anything at all, then it’s probably safe to assume it’s bad news. And because of that, it would make sense that he would probably want to find more sources on the story to verify whether it’s true or not. After-all, how many years has it been since Holo returned to her homeland? The passage of time can be very cruel in such case.

On their way to their next destination, they had a choice to continue down the road they were taking and encounter mercenaries, or take the detour on the path said to be filled with wolves. Mercenaries are too much trouble to deal with, so they opted to take the detour, as Holo says she’ll just talk to the wolves if it comes down to it. But along the way they meet a Shepard, the kind of Human Holo absolutely loathes.

Episode 7

After talking it out with Holo, Lawrence decides to hire Nora to accompany them on their journey. But fortunately their two days trip to Ruvingeigen was a peaceful one, and no wolves showed up to cause any problems.

Nora became a shepherd after she found Enek, terribly wounded (likely from bandits or mercenaries as opposed to fending off wolves), with a Shepard staff in his mouth. It does seems to suggest that perhaps his former owner may have potentially been killed in the same incident he had gotten wounded. But it’s thanks to Enek and their bond that Nora was able to become a Shepard and start earning money to pursue her dream of becoming a tailor one day. It was nice to see Lawrence lending his ear and offering her guidance that is likely hard to come by for her.

Holo was pretty jealous today to have Nora with them, even though it was only for two days. But she did have a valid concern that Lawrence kept overlooking, and that was the risk of her being exposed as a wolf. Amazingly that never happened, and most noticeably the interesting part of Enek not being more guarded around her. The dog is undoubtedly smart enough to know she isn’t Human, so was a curious thing to see how didn’t make a fuss travelling alongside her. I suppose it just recognizes she isn’t actually threat, after-all it isn’t like she’s staring down at them with the intent to harm or kill, though she did joke around about having a ‘raw sheep’– Lawrence didn’t find that very funny of course. However hat was funny and absolutely adorable was the way Lawrence so seriously told Holo that yes, she’s much cuter than Nora! He was very earnest about it! Heehee~!

But hoooooohhhh boy. Their arrival to Ruvingeigen was certainly an unsettling one. I’ve been suspicious of the merchant in Poroson (ep 6) to begin with due to his sketchy reaction to Lawrence asking for armour in exchange, suggesting he knew something Lawrence didn’t, and was glad to just get it off his hands. I mean seriously, what was up with that “Armor you say?” reaction, honestly I was surprised that Lawrence didn’t think twice about that reaction. But I suppose he had assumed the man was just overwhelmed after being caught red-handed in a scheme, and wasn’t about to try to pull anymore stunts on him.

But unfortunately it appears that it is not as ‘risk-free’ as Lawrence believed to be. Given the reaction of the officials at the check-in/tariffs points whenever it gets brought up, along with a freaking messenger coming all this way to pass on a message to Lawrence– something is definitely up, I can’t imagine this news being any good. He and Holo keep talking about making profits with it, but all of this bad news is pointing to the worse case scenario: Lawrence will most likely end up with merchandise that will cause loss rather than profits. If his armour ends up being worthless, then it will be unbearably difficult to get off his hands to anyone aware of it’s meagre value. And if that ends up being the case, we’ll have to see whether the Rowen Merchant Association (Lawrence likens as a piece of home while travelling) would leave him to be hung dry or not. Man, that’d be awful to see after Jacob was talking about how each of the members in their association are like his own kids…