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Volume 4 Snippet 1.4

Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes

３．Hiroshi’s Kitchen Garden

　Azuma Hiroshi had a secret he was keeping from his friends as of recent.

「……Just about finished here, maybe？」

　Hiroshi had in fact been secretly tending to his kitchen garden, comprised of flowerpots, ever since they left Darl.

　Now, don’t think of these as any ordinary flower pots. Hiroshi was the one taking care of the plants, so there was no way this would end well. In the first place, the pots themselves were specially made so as to harvest plants within the day. With Hiroshi using these pots to cultivate plants, it was impossible with regular kitchen gardens or plantations.

「Aight, good stuff there mate. Guess I’ll let ‘em dry a bit.」

　Drying the herbs (an unbelievable amount for just being in flowerpots) with magic, Hiroshi stored them secretly in the ingredient section of storage. You would never believe these herbs to have been harvested in only a day from flowerpots, because they were very high-quality. Depending on where you took this stuff, it could amount to an average person’s monthly pay.

「Now, what to plant next…」

　Recording the data in his notebook, Hiroshi lined up all the seeds and everything else he had stored up for the kitchen garden as he thought of the next step. His facial expression was akin to that of a mad scientist.

「Ah yeah. Guess I’d better selectively breed this tomato.」

　Hiroshi said, planting two varieties of tomato from today’s harvest into different flower pots. He began by cultivating the base variety.

「Now, doin’ this the normal way would mean the plants’ll pollinate on their own by tomorrow ‘n git fruit on ‘em, but there ain’t no point doin’ it that way, so how ‘bout I speed things up?」

　Once he had made the sheet of paper for the data, Hiroshi used the function of the flower pot to accelerate the growth. This required a fair amount of mana, but Hiroshi’s mana was practically limitless. He wouldn’t realize if only a little bit of mana were sucked out.

「So first I gotta cross fertilize the two right here.」

　He extracted a suitable amount (not all of it, but half, as is the procedure) and pollinated each plant. 

「Now then, gimme some nice fruit mate.」

　Hiroshi said after adding fertilizer and water as he poured in mana one more time. The tomatoes ripened to a bright red as they grew bigger and bigger by the moment. He evaluated them with his secret breeding tester that he made recently.

「Yup, looks like there are a buncha results just from cross fertilizin’ the same variety. It just keeps goin’ with two or three flower pots.」

　As he murmured all this, Hiroshi first decided to raise all the new varieties he had harvested at once and then increase their number. As if not deeming this to be worth his time, Hiroshi quickly poured mana in to increase their number, checking all of them and separating the fruit that would be of no use, which he planned to later process into fertilizer.

「Then how ‘bout I finish up all the ones fit for feedin’.」

　Hiroshi was dissatisfied with the tomatoes in this world. After all, most of the ones you got your hands on were both too sour to eat raw and with a tough skin, and yet even if you tried heating them up, the flavor was sub-par. They had managed to cover this to a degree with Haruna’s talent and passion, but limits were still limits, in which case the only option left was to gamble his craftsman spirit and create what he sought after.

　In Japan, there is a saying: “If you do not have it, then make it”, and as a Japanese craftsman he was more than willing to do just that.

「Now it’s time for some cross-fertilization, eh」

　Once the amount and quality were beginning to solidify, Hiroshi finally began the selective breeding process. Finally, three days later, Hiroshi had bred tomatoes for processing and food to his heart’s content, but only after bringing about a large amount of failed products.

「Hey Sensei？」

「Wazzup？」

「What have you been doing, all cooped up in your room？」

「Just some hobbies I got goin’ for me.」

　Hiroshi answered Mio’s question truthfully, in a sense. However, Mio immediately heard warning sirens go off in her head at the word “hobby”. After all, when it came to Hiroshi’s hobbies, the only thing he enjoyed doing in this world was crafting. And when he was up in his room working on something, it was bound to be nothing good.

「……Sensei, what are you making？」

「It’s a secret, mate. I still have a lot of duds in there.」

「Duds……？」

　When she heard further suspicious, dangerous words come out of Hiroshi’s mouth, Mio had come to a decision.

（I…had better check in on this.）

　This wasn’t the first time Hiroshi had gone off to make un-called for inventions, but this just felt especially fishy. She just felt like this issue might not end with their household if they weren’t careful.

　Following her intuition, Mio snuck into the room to see what Hiroshi had been hiding from them. What she saw was…

「Nah, this ain’t very tasty……」

　She saw Hiroshi grabbing some artificially-enhanched korn and yanking it off, eating it on the spot.

　Needless to say, korn was a type of monster. Grown to their full potential, korn were essentially humanoid grass with several arms of crops, and on average you could harvest 12 corn from each stalk. Once fully grown, korn were meddlesome, prone to scamper away in pursuit of new horizons, and were not something just any warrior could take down. Not giving them an inch and capturing them before ripping off the headpiece fruit to silence them in an instant was a sign that you were experienced in the art of farming.

　If you weren’t careful, however, you could instead get a fierce chop to your face and meet a terrible end.

「Sensei, what are you doing……？」

「……Ah, Mio. You were here……」

「You were acting suspicious, so I hid and watched.」

「How careless of me……」

　If Mio were to truly hide, even Hiroshi would never find her. That fact was proven with this little venture, but honestly, she didn’t care about that right now. After both parties shared their agreement on that fact, Mio went straight to the questioning.

「What are you trying to accomplish by spawning monsters here？」

「Well obviously I’m doin’ selective breedin’, mate.」

「Selective breeding……」

　Hiroshi had a previous incident of selective breeding on king-size poms. There was even a risk with selectively breeding korn, as unbelievably strong ones could potentially emerge. This was not something you should ever go off and do by yourself.

「I think I’m makin’ some good progress, but I just can’t seem to git myself any white korn……」

「Sensei, it would be dangerous if you were to spawn a strong one, so could you at least stop it with the monster ingredients……」

「Normal crops aren’t too different, y’know. I even had to turn tomatoes into monsters twice when I selectively bred ‘em.」

「Sensei……」

　Mio glared at Hiroshi both for the tomato comment and for secretly raising monsters as she blurted out her thoughts. Hiroshi, noticing this glare, threw the ultimate tomato (now completed) at Mio.

「Try it」

「……This is……」

「Tasty, right？」

　Mio nodded, somewhat peeved. Now that she agreed with Hiroshi, she couldn’t exactly complain.

「Sensei. If you’re going to go through with this, at least do it where everyone can see, ok?」

「Roger that, mate.」

　Hiroshi nodded easily. And now that he had “come out” about tomorrow’s agenda,

「So the herbs with super good quality I don’t remember buying and new varieties of tomato I’m not familiar with being mixed in were all your doing, Hiroshi-kun.」

「Yup yup.」

「Sure you’re happy about using them up？」

「Well yeah, that’s the whole point of makin’ ‘em.」

　Before Tatsuya or Makoto could lecture Hiroshi, Haruna’s question jumped out, stifling their attempts. The vegetables, fruit, and herbs that Hiroshi selectively bred at this time would go on to spread throughout the world via the Wulls experimental farm, After causing this agricultural revolution, Hiroshi would once again create an unneeded ripple in the world.