Ookami to Koushinryou Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf • Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf – Episode 23 discussion

How curious, I was speculating with people in some previous ep’s posts that Elsa could be made a Saint with a miracle (involving Holo somehow) to make her status higher, and get Enberch off Tereo’s backs.

Turns out they’re just gonna leg it, hah! We’re still waiting for the cave reveal, and my first thought at the ending was that that is where the church passage connects to.

Some good banter once again, really does feel like Lawrence is able to keep up better. Expected her to hit him harder after his comment on her body though lol

I’m a bit surprised they ended up with the running plan, really thought Lawrence would merchant his way out of it all.

Holo and Lawrence escaping was not on my radar at all

the flow of the story made it seemed like Elder Zem was going to utilise Lawrence’s wisdom to save the village and get out of this knotty situation

Ilma does fit with the name of beer fairy, yet Holo admits she’s more dignified than she is

a few love jabs here and there (not right now guys)

Huh. That’s rather inconvenient.

Those are some serious accusations.

Time to see what the plan is now.

So, we know what Enberch is up to, time to see what they can do about it.

So they’re willing to abandon everything other than that 1 book and take them with them and run?

Not like anything is going to survive if the townsfolk destroy everything in revenge.

Uh oh, she’s collapsed!

Seems like their plan is set. They’re going to employ the Joestar Ultimate Technique.

Right, they’ve got what they came here for. Time to make like a tree and leave.

Seems like things are getting hairy, best expedite things.

There’s their ticket out of here, time to get going.

Holo didn’t hit Lawrence fast enough after that ample figure comment
[](#breakingnews ‘better yet it should have been a strong elbow’)

**The Merchant’s Corner**

Welcome back to another episode of Spice and Wolf, and with it, another chapter of The Merchant’s Corner! In this series, I try to dive deeper into the economics (and the political) plots of Spice and Wolf, and break them down with more detail so you can understand them better than from the show alone.

[Episode 22 here](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1f7dcyx/comment/ll6n25s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)

Disclaimer #1: I am not an economics professional, so I may get some things wrong. If you have a different, possibly better understanding of a certain point than I do, feel free to suggest edits.

Disclaimer #2: All of these are pre-written before the episode airs, based on the content of the source material. Expect that there will be extensive rewrites after I watch each episode – as a result, expect that each episode will take much longer to post.

We ended on a cliffhanger last week: someone had apparently eaten wheat from Tereo and died. That was almost certain to serve as the catalyst to spark the conflict with Enberch in full, and now Lawrence and Holo are caught right in the middle of it.

This week, we find out how the village intends to respond, and what Lawrence and Holo’s role in this will be. Will they be captives? Will they be let go? Will they become the saviors?

Let’s find out!

**Episode 23, Part 1:**

Last week, we weren’t given many details on what exactly happened, just that someone ate wheat from Tereo and died. This week, we learn the full plot.

It is said that they died from being poisoned by a wheat disease known as Khepas Liquor, or alternatively, Ridelius’s Hellfire. To give some background, this is actually *not* a fictional disease, it just has a fictional name. The real-life counterpart and the disease that Khepas Liquor was almost certainly based on is called ergotism, also at one point known as St. Anthony’s Fire (which isn’t too far off from the in-universe name of “Ridelius’s Hellfire.) This is a disease that mainly affects rye, but can also spread to wheat, barley, and other related plants. It poisons the wheat and can cause anyone who’s eaten it to experience gangrene in their limbs and a laundry list of other nasty effects, ultimately resulting in death.

(The one liberty that the writers seem to have taken with this is the timeframe: gangrenous ergotism, which is the form where the victim’s limbs “burn from the inside” and turn black, would take weeks or months to kill. Instead, the series seems to imply that the harvest was only sent out days ago, and someone has already died. This would be more in line with acute ergot poisoning, but that wouldn’t have the symptoms of gangrenous limbs. We’ll just chalk the difference up to the fact that, nominally, Khepas Liquor is technically fictional.)

In modern times we know that ergotism is caused by a fungal disease of the wheat, but in medieval times with slightly less sophisticated medical knowledge than ours, they often believed it was a form of divine punishment or a plot by demons. Demons would add these diseased wheat plants (which can be identified by the fact that they’re black, rather than golden-brown) to the harvest. At this point, it’s still fine if those blackened wheat berries are sorted out, which is the responsibility of all farming villages; however, if they are left in and ground into flour, it is too late. That flour is now contaminated.

Now, just as a disease, this is bad enough. However, what makes this a *truly* devastating economic force is that villages would often pool their harvests for exports, and there was no careful batch tracking or record-keeping or any modern techniques we’d consider necessary. That means if ergot is discovered in their harvest, *none* of the harvest can be considered safe anymore. In fact, that even goes for any parts of their harvest that they kept for themselves for subsistence.

Essentially, they’ve lost an entire year’s worth of production. 

Enberch is now going to be sending all of the wheat purchased from Tereo this year back to Tereo. Obviously, that also means that Tereo has to return the money. Which they apparently can’t do, because they had already spent a lot of it on their farms and on their celebrations as we saw just a few episodes ago.

Poverty and debt, in and of itself, isn’t the end of the world. But a much more scary factor for Tereo is that since they counted on a good harvest this year, they’ve already eaten most of the food reserves from harvests of previous years, thinking this year’s harvest would be enough to stock up again. Well, now what they’re finding out is that this year’s harvest may be *entirely* contaminated, so they have to throw out their stockpile. What will they eat? You can be sure Enberch won’t be providing food for free.

Played wrong, this could be the end of the village.

[Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1fcvws2/comment/lmbif30)