Chapter 2.3
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Translator: Einbedo
Editor: Weasalopes
「Be gone with you!」
「Makoto, behind you!」
「I’ve had just about enough of this!!!」
「Sensei, Haruna, get down. I’ll shoot a fire arrow」
The front path to Aranwen’s temple was in critical condition.
「Isn’t this going a little overboard???」
Hiroshi grumbled and complained as he reactivated outclass to gather aggro. He fended off the approaching ivy vines with the knife in his left hand and proceeded to swiftly close the distance between him and the core, delivering a deadly blow with his sickle. The unidentified carnivorous plant, who’s official name was the man-eater, was being sliced down at a satisfying tempo, although, try as they might, there seemed to be no end in sight. Man-eaters, as the name would suggest, were carnivorous plant life who feed off of humans. They wrap the victim’s body around with ivy vines and sap away their body heat, at which point they are swallowed whole, only to be digested live. This kind of mechanism instills fear in its prey by nature. Although its preferred meal is humans it could feed on virtually anything.
Their biggest weakness was a sufficiently sharp sickle. With just one swing of the thing their numbers get thinned out rapidly. This was not limited to just man-eaters as all plant type monsters tend to be vulnerable to sickles. Vine plants were especially weak to it, just one clean swing to the core was enough to take it down.
「I can feel my proficiency level, in a weapon I’ll likely never be using, going up rapidly!」
Grumbled Haruna as she swiftly plowed through the man-eaters while Hiroshi acted as an aggro sponge. A rapier wasn’t suited for this kind of encounter, so she had to borrow a spare sickle from their back up reserve. Mio was also laboring away with the exact same weapon of choice.
「I’ll be burning it down, so make distance!」
Hiroshi cut a hole through the surrounding man-eaters and, in accordance with Takeya’s command, immediately pulled away from combat. It’s not like it would do any damage even if he got caught in the crossfire, but it’d be inconvenient if Takeya’s magic didn’t go off.
「Grand Napalm!」
A thick line of fire neatly grew in width as it consumed the man-eaters in its flames. Those flames were so scorchingly hot that they instantaneously annihilated all man-eaters within a fifty meter radius. Magic, due to its mechanics, didn’t affect anything outside of its trajectory, so it was perfect for times like these.
「Once the cooldown’s over be prepared for another one.」
「I know, and would you take care of the ones hiding in the bushes so they don’t get in the way.」
「You can count on us.」
Following Tatsuya’s orders, they quickly plowed through all the man-eaters hiding inside the bushes. The ash produced by the burn was being diligently collected by Mio.
「That being said, we’ve gone through the same motions three times already and we’ve only cleared a quarter of it thus far.」
「And its core is still intact, so if started raining they’d sprout back up in a second.」
「This is pointless…」
「We ain’t getting anywhere without a drastic change in plans, ain’t we.」
While in agreement with Makoto’s sentiment they still thought it’d be better to do something instead of doing nothing and desperately carried on with the extermination process. This had a similar shade of pointlessness as trying to pull out weeds by hand for one’s neighborhood association. There was no end to it, but you had to keep on going, and it wasn’t a rare sight to see that they’ve grown right back up immediately after work had concluded. That feeling of futility transcended language.
When one is doing work for one’s neighborhood association it’s fine to half-ass it a little but in this situation, even if so much as one of them remained intact, it would spell disaster. Accidentally leaving a root behind, only for it to grow right back, was out of the question.
「After another three napalm rounds, how about we just run off with anything useful we can find.」
「Sounds like a plan, it’s not like we’ll be getting anything serious done about this in the foreseeable future.」
「There’s something off about this area so I want to examine it. Would you all mind tagging along as well?」
「Roger, but first, let’s take care of the matter at hand, shall we?」
The rest of the team nods back and returns right back to work.
By the time they finished cleaning up after the third grand napalm the sun had already begun to descend westward.
「Haru, what was it that had been bothering you?」
Mio asked just as they had entered the village after finishing work for the time being.
「I need to get a feel for the area’s energy flow. If you haven’t paid a visit to the temple in a long while, it might just go badly」
「We’ll leave that stuff to your discretion.」
Everyone nodded to Haruna’s remark. Behind this kind of phenomena there were usually some spiritual factors in play.
「Do you think the man-eaters get enough nutrients when there are so many of them?」
「Well, they’re capable of performing photosynthesis after all.」
「Can it possibly be any more of a nuisance…」
That’s what made carnivorous plant type monsters so annoying to deal with. When there’s no fodder around they could just extract nutrients from the ground, which makes one question why it’s even necessary for them to be carnivorous in the first place. This meant that cutting off their food supply was no easy task by any means. They headed back to their temporary base of operations with no clear solution in sight.
「So, what’s the plan?」
「Maybe we should seriously consider weed-killers?」
「We’d need to be very cautious with those things.」
The discussion shifted to their new plan of action as they were preparing lunch in the aforementioned temporary base of operations.
「So are they out of the question, sensei?」
「Anything potent enough to affect that thing would likely take the land along with it.」
「Yikers.」
Leave it to some nameless carnivorous plant to have needlessly high survival capabilities. Makoto and Tatsuya spoke their mind, visibly fed up with the whole situation.
「Worst case scenario they might be resistant to weed-killers and we’d only eradicate the remaining plant life」
「Relying on chemicals is a no-go, huh.」
「They’re a bit pushing it to be sure」
Tatsuya grew even more fed up after further confirmation. At this point it might’ve been necessary to just burn everything down and dig up as many roots as possible, which was even more labersome than any of the previous suggestions.
「Any bright ideas?」
Haruna joined in on the conversation after putting the soup, which was to be a side dish to the omuraisu, to heat and having taken care of all other necessary preparations. Although they called it soup, in consistency it more closely resembled a stew, so it took its sweet time to simmer.
「The best course of action would be to fight fire with fire as they say, or plant with plant in this case.」
「Couldn’t that go horribly wrong as well?」
「Ideally it’d need to either take the other with it in battle or narrowly win but be unable to sustain itself afterwards and naturally wither away due to the characteristics of its type.」
「What if something unexpected happens in the middle of all this?」
「If ya start looking for flaws in any plan we’ll be here all day.」
Everyone simmered down being unable to argue back against Hiroshi’s uncharacteristic assertiveness. Hiroshi carried on with his point in an attempt to fully sell them on it.
「We should keep in mind that the man-eaters are clearly some alien species before worrying about the possible repercussions to the ecosystem. By their very existence the local ecosystem there is already out of whack.」
「Well, you’re not wrong there.」
Everyone present was of the same opinion as Haruna, who felt like there was something missing from the equation, but at the same time nobody had any other concrete ideas to oppose Hiroshi. Plants, especially vine plants, could reproduce in the blink of an eye if even the tiniest remnants of their roots were left intact, so it was a stretch to say that digging them all up was a realistic pursuit.
「I’m still not fully sold on the idea but dwelling on it won’t help matters. I got the whole fight plants with plants part, but what type do we plan on pitting against it?」
「I was thinking we could it make it ourselves actually」
「Oh you were thinking, wait, what do you mean by make?」
「If we combine our alchemical and agricultural know how we can easily whip up a new seed type or two.」
It seems as though the beaten pattern was inescapable. Places change but their way of doing things remained.
「Even with thorough usage of artificial plant growth hastening It’ll still take about a week till completion, so go poke around and see if ya can pinpoint any causes in the meantime, but before we get too ahead of ourselves, let’s start by procuring some flower pots.」
「Understood, oh and I think it should be ready by now.」
Haruna headed back to the kitchen after giving out her reply. There she cracked a self-satisfied smile at the perfectly cooked root vegetables and began working on the chicken rice (I’m almost sure there’s a word for it but I couldn’t find it?) part of the omelet.
「It smells delicious, doesn’t it?」
「We came to prepare lunch but it appears we ran a bit late.」
Artiem and Chet popped in carrying a truckload of ingredients with them just as the table was being set.
「No need to worry about our food situation, we’ve got enough food stocked up for the apocalypse and some expert cooks to boot.」
「That reminds me, aren’t Hiroshi, Haruna and Mio all great at cooking?」
「Yeah, I’ve dabbled in it.」
The two elves looked on dubiously as Hiroshi offhandedly blurted out a logically incoherent remark. While not all of them were capable of cooking by default, the craftsmen of Fairy Tale Chronicles had at least fifty proficiency in the stat from the get go. As such Hiroshi wasn’t committing any crimes against logic when saying that he’s merely ‘dabbled’ in it.
The reason why Artiem knew about their cooking abilities is because she got to see them in action when she was helping out with breakfast. The kobachi was handled by Haruna, Mio did the Miso and Hiroshi smoked the fish and made tamagoyaki.
「And what might this ‘ere be?」
「It’s a Japanese dish called omuraisu, a type of omelet.」
Artiem and Chet stared intently at the dish served in front them – the omuraisu, an archetypical example of Japanized western cuisine. Although it originated in Japan, it drew inspiration from European cuisine, just as any other Japanized food, but the idea of westernized Japanese food never really caught traction. That’s because it was usually only the Japanese who played around with foreign cuisine.
Just to be clear the omuraisu being served right now was the kind that could often be seen decorating the tables of any old household – chicken rice rolled up in a thin layer of omelet, and not the type that places the omelet over the rice. Haruna prefered a more homely, soul-food style presentation over the type seen in restaurants when dealing with Japanese cuisine.
「I can put together two more portions if you two have yet to eat lunch.」
「I very much appreciate the gesture but sadly we’ve already had a bite to eat.」
「Ya woulda been better off starving for a bit for a meal as fine as this right ‘ere.」
「Tell me about it…」
Their pointy ears symbolically drooped downwards, further amplifying the disappointment on their faces.
「If you’d really like to I could teach you the recipe?」
「Would you really do that for us!?」
「Can we make it outta the local village ingredients layin’ around!?」
「Yea, we’ll teach you how to make both soy sauce and omuraisu but, unlike the former, the latter’s seasoning, or at least something close enough to it, can be found in this very village, so it should be a walk in the park.」
Artiem’s and Chet’s faces lit up at the proposition. It seemed as though even elves were slaves to their stomachs.
「Less talking more chowing.」
「That repetitive laborious work got me famished so if you make me wait any longer I can’t be responsible for what might occur.」
「You heard the people. Now, if you’ll excuse me.」
The two elves malignantly watched on as everyone else relished the food right in front of their eyes. They weren’t hungry but seeing others feast on something exotic made them feel as though they were missing out.
「Artiem, wouldn’t it ‘ave been better if ya two just shared a single portion?」
「I was just thinking the same thing…」
But it was already too late to cry over spilled milk. The following afternoon Artiem got Haruna to teach her the recipe. With this newfound knowledge she was able to wow the other villagers with her cooking skills.
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