3 bar menu

Volume 2 Chapter 13-1: Threat

Late at night I left the inn secretly and set off running.

It was so dark that visibility was near zero, but I used the wind to sense my surroundings so I wasn’t troubled.

The reason I left the inn in the middle of the night was to clear space in my 【Item Box】.

As of now my Item Box was filled with 100 goats each weighing around 30kg. I was left with less than 1,000 kg of storage capacity.

Tomorrow I would have to store away the food and clothes that we bought so I needed to return to Erucy tonight to offload the goats.

「Even so, as expected of the Commercial City Erin. It’s filled with delicious things.」

Dinner had been delicious. We had feasted on beef stew with tomato based demi-glace sauce and bread with a healthy heap of butter. It was accompanied by a wonderful salad with bits of bacon and egg inside as well.

As I thought, beef is truly delicious. The meat aside, its milk was much better than goat milk. I wanted to raise them in Erucy, but their cost-performance ratio was very poor. Just to feed them for a day, leaving aside leftovers, even our actual grain supply for our meals wouldn’t be enough to feed them. Furthermore, they were weak to stress and cold, easily fell sick, and took time to care for. For us it was impossible.

The bread was great as well since the wheat had been threshed carefully and it had been baked using butter and eggs so it was much more delicious than our usual fare.

Even the fresh salad was something luxurious that we couldn’t eat normally back home.

But even that may pale in comparison to what we had along with the meal. We were given Cider (alcohol made with apples) to drink. Both Elves and Fire Foxes were prone to loving alcohol, so the three of us were gung-ho about it.

Just a little bit longer and we should be able to produce our own alcohol back home. Once that happens our daily lives would become more pleasant.

「I need to replenish my personal funds…I’d rather not…but maybe I should sell a knife? My manufacturing methods are even better than the Empire’s so they should fetch a high price.」

Today’s entertainment and food expenses had all been paid for out of my own pocket.

Though it technically was official business, emotionally I was reluctant to use the town’s funds on anything but the essentials. That kind of thing would drag you down further into corruption once you started.

Despite saying all that, I really didn’t want to start selling iron weapons. I could easily not bother developing specialty goods for Erucy to produce and instead just produce iron goods and weapons. I could then bring them to Erin and sell enough of them to let Erucy live the next few decades with decadence.

However, if I did that Erucy would become an existence that would crumble immediately upon my death.

As I thought to myself I reached the forest nearby Erucy.

This place was too steep for good hunting so no one used it usually.

「I need to build a proper fence around here.」

I used the trees growing around the area and wound barbed wire around them to create a fenced in area of about 100m.

It would allow intelligent species to enter fairly easily, but deer, goats, and boars would be kept in and kept out respectively.

I made sure that there weren’t any animals that could hurt the goats inside of the fence so I could release the goats without worry.

Then I created two large brick animal pens and entered one of them.

「【Samsara Recursion】 Deet. 【Item Box】」

Upon entering I quickly invoked my spell and began using 【Item Box】 and began unloading the temporarily dead goats.

Finishing that I quickly returned to my normal form.

After all I would be returning to Erin soon. The less time I could spend as Deet the less recoil I would have to suffer.

I quickly sent bursts of electricity into the goats and forcefully revived them.

「Meee~eeee」
「Mee~eeeee」

The goats revived one after another and cried out in bewilderment. However, since I had closed the door to the pens they couldn’t run about.

After finishing their revival I entered the empty pen next door.

There I left a large amount of maple leaves to dry out in the sun.

I had asked the women and children of Erucy to collect maple leaves while they were out gathering cranberries in order to feed them to the goats.

While it was true you could release the goats into the mountain during the winter and they’d dig up roots and eat bark in order to feed themselves, it would also cause problems.

There was the possibility of them damaging the trees and causing them to whither. We had to at least provide them with some food so they didn’t forage too much.

「We’ve gotta ingrain the habit to return to these pens…」

I placed some of the dry leaves inside feed boxes in the goat pen. The goats began chewing on the leaves.

Goats were clever in some ways. They would always remember where there was food.

If they remembered that this was a warm place to sleep and a place where they could find food, even if we released them they would still return here.

「It’ll be the Fire Foxes’ work starting tomorrow so I better teach them right…」

First they would have to milk the goats in the pens, then they would have to let them out to exercise after feeding them, then they would have to clean the pens and replace their food and water. They would then have to take the excrement to the compost heap before finally gathering the goats back into the pens and closing the doors at the end of the day.

In addition they would have to sterilize the milk with heat and bottle it. They’d have to learn how to turn the milk into cheese and butter, help the goats give birth, breed them, cull the goats that stop giving milk, and cut their hair and gather it. It was quite a big job.

「Well they seem motivated so they should be alright.」

Well for today I gave them their food and water and shut the door. Like this the Fire Foxes will graduate from being a NEET and will instead be productive members of Erucy.

Right now they were only gathering mushrooms, making lard, and producing sauce. However, they were unable to make enough forall the elves so their impression was thin.

However, if the girls delivered Milk daily to the elves then I’m sure they’d see and acknowledge their hard work.

I left Erucy quickly and returned to Erin.