“W-W-W-W-What are you doing!?”
It was more of a nibble, and didn’t really hurt. Just stupidly scary.
“I thought if I bit off a piece of your head, it might take away some of that bad brain of yours that keeps complicating things on its own.”
“Please don’t. I’ll die.”
Humans, as far as I knew, would die if a piece of their head was bitten off. We were thinking reeds, after all.
3.
“There’s no sense in worrying about the future. You’re not a superhero.”
I couldn’t save everyone, anyway. The best I could hope for was doing something about the situation at hand. Even in that case, I would end up far from perfect. I could save some lives, but others would be left to their demise for my lack of ability.
Some triage would be required of me, like a rescue team during a natural disaster. They couldn’t spend all of their time trying to save someone who couldn’t be saved, but had to turn to those they could save. That doesn’t make them heartless, because they’re not gambling out there. They have to make sure to save those with the highest chances of survival.
“That’s how things are. I don’t expect you to get over it, though.”
“Tia...”
“Do what you can. Neither the Inspector nor the god of this world would expect you to perform something you can’t.”
“Tia...”
“If it still feels too heavy on your shoulders, just let me know, and I’ll bite your head to pieces with a swift chomp. Then your job here is done.”
She put some force into her bite.
“Ow! Ow! Your fangs are digging into me! Your fangs!”
Nothing about that was a swift chomp. She would totally torture me to death with those fangs, like for real.
“Thank you, Tia.”
“Hm. I am your partner, after all.”
The dragon finally released her bite on my head.
Now that we had Hieronymus on board, our efficiency was higher than ever. Cait Sithes were a species very well versed in magic, and he had various magic spells under his belt, too. One of those spells, Lock-On, was extremely useful in our situation. Countless rays of light shot out of Hieronymus, illuminating where the beets were. The workers now only had to run over to those spots and dig up the plant. We no longer had to spend any time looking for the plant.
“I’m sure it’s a variation on targeting, but I wonder if there’s a point when he’s multi-locking so many targets at once?” said Miss Maley, the only other spellcaster in our party.
“There’s no point in debating whether or not there is one, fräulein.”
The magical cat elegantly waved his tail.
“I thought it necessary, and magic answered the call. Voila.”
“So you made this spell up on the spot?”
“Is magic something that can be made? Is it not something that should be sung to the rhythm of one’s heart? What is there, has always been, wise fräulein.”
I had a hard time deciding whether or not I understood what he was saying. Of course, I had no knowledge of magic, so I had no way of telling if what he said was accurate. However, Miss Maley looked amazed, and Tiamat was nodding to it, so I decided that he must have hit the mark.
Or else, just like Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchhausen, he just dodged the question with his eloquence and likable attitude. The man that shared a name with the Cait Sith was famous for telling tall tales, after all.
“No, he is mostly correct. The wind, the tide, and the phases of the moon, for example, all have a purpose, but you could say they don’t have one at all. The same goes for my magic,” Tiamat explained.
Um, sorry?
I was more confused than before.
“Tia. Can you dumb it down some more?”
“No, I cannot. And since you have no talent for magic, there would be no point in explaining it.”
“How cruel! Maybe if I work hard enough, I could use magic, too.”
“It’s not just you, Eiji. Anyone from modern-day Earth won’t be able to use magic.”
The dragon sighed. Magic, superpowers, abilities... no matter what the name, it seemed that one needed a predisposition or a particular anatomy in order to wield it.
“Humans have little magic in them, and aren’t good at using it, anyway.”
Even in this world, there weren’t too many human spellcasters. It wasn’t something anyone could pick up and do. In addition, people on Earth have long forsaken the occult. Countries used to be governed by seeking the guidance of gods, and by horoscopes and prophecies. Those are the olden days.
Earth today is ruled by science and hard evidence. Nothing is acknowledged as law until the experiment proves the hypothesis under the same conditions regardless of who performs the experiment, and when, where, and how many times the experiment is performed. Even if a clairvoyant individual were to give the name of a wanted serial killer, no arrests or charges can be made without evidence.
“Do you consider that foolish?”
“I don’t. Much better than the alternative.”
Arresting someone based on the intuition of a detective, for example, would be ludicrous. Imagine the countless false convictions on our hands. Who could guarantee that said detective wasn’t acting on the basis of personal gain, anyway?
“Hm. A healthy way of thinking. That’s exactly why you’re not suited to perform magic.”
“I don’t really understand.”
“Magic is distortion. When the distortion is explained, there is no more mystique. That’s how magic faded away from Earth.”
While her explanation was rather shapeless, I decided that all I needed to know was that people from Earth, including myself, could not wield magic.
“But didn’t the hero and his party use magic?”
“They were a cheat code.”
“Touché.”
I shrugged. Using something or having something you ordinarily can’t is the definition of cheating.
As we continued our rather fruitless discourse, the beets were being rapidly harvested. With the pace we were at now, we would reach our goal earlier than expected, thanks to the mighty baron.
“It’s an honor to serve you, Lord Eiji.”
Picking up on my glance, the Cait Sith called back with the elegant wave of his tail. Lord? That kind of tickled. I had been using ‘sir’ and other honorifics of the like, but the word ‘lord’ carried a whole other meaning than reading it in books when I was the one being addressed by it.
“Oh, please. I should be thanking you, Lord Hieronymus.”
I tried using it in return, and it was super embarrassing. There was something painful about talking in a showboaty way once you hit thirty.
“A blushing middle-aged man calling out to his lord. There’s some indication for fiction of the fan variety.”
“And who exactly would be the target audience for that?”
A giant Russian blue and a man in his thirties...? I definitely would not ship that. I hadn’t realized that this sort of knowledge was implemented in Tiamat, too. How useless could her knowledge get? Eh, Miss Inspector?
“At this rate, our work should be done by the end of the day. Are we going back to town as soon as we’re done?” Tiamat asked me as she assessed our progress.
Our time of departure was actually a rather important matter. Enough that we should not have been engaging in discussion of fanfiction.
From the harvest point to the city of Lishua, it would take us about four days by carriage, which meant that we would have to make camp a minimum of three times along the way. Since we have a base camp set up now, everyone can take adequate rest, but on the road both our meals and rest would be more lacking than they are now, and we would have to spend manpower guarding the camp. This was because, unlike on our way here, we had cargo.
While we were the only ones who should have been privy to the value of sugar beets at the moment, who knew how that information could have leaked?
It wasn’t too hard for me to imagine that someone might suspect that we were transporting some valuable goods under the guise of transporting the vegetable, especially when the job involved Mister Milon, the major merchant, and Mister Garish, the chief of the local Adventurers’ Guild, along with A-rank adventurer guards. If anyone was out there watching us and just thought we were here to dig up some vegetables, perhaps they were a little naïve.
“Let’s leave first thing in the morning. I’ll discard all of our food tonight, save for five days’ worth,” I declared.
4.
Keeping five days’ worth of food despite the return trip taking four days was basically an insurance plan.
“That’s one cheap insurance. A day’s worth of extra won’t do any good if something were to happen.”
“Peace of mind can make a difference.”
I chuckled at Tiamat’s logical counterpoint. On the topic of how much backup stock to keep, nothing was truly enough, actually. These were things not intended to be used to begin with, as long as things went according to plan. Keeping ten days’ worth of food for a four days’ trip was pointless.
“If something were to happen,” Tiamat had said, but the job of the brain is to draw up the plan so no accidents would happen. Preparing for the unexpected isn’t in the job description. If a party has to prepare for an unexpected event from the get-go, there was something wrong with the plan. ‘Never tell me the odds’ is, unfortunately, not a plan but more of a declaration of determination or a rationalization of impulse. A plan’s no use at all if it’s made with room for error.
“I can’t really tell if you’re careful or daring, Sir Eiji.” Syfer laughed as he approached us.
“Indeed. In other words, he draws his lines in strange ways,” the dragon chimed in.
“You think so? I’m just saying there’s no point in considering a back-up for the back-up for the back-up.”
“Still, you kept five days’ worth of food.”
“I told you. I’m buying my peace of mind.”
With exactly enough, we would have always been plagued by the anxiety of ‘what if there isn’t enough?’ As the amount decreased, our insecurity would have magnified. With insurance that we can be up to a day late in our journey, said anxiety would be drastically lower.
“But we’re out of luck if we’re two days late, right?”
“True, Syfer. But a plan with a chance of a two day, so 48 hours, delay is flawed to begin with.”
“I see...”
Despite nodding along, my theory didn’t seem to click with him. That couldn’t be helped. Alas, it was the unbridgeable gap between management and talent.
“In any case, Lord Eiji, we shall feast tonight.”
Hieronymus approached us too. With Miss Maley at his side. Since when were they so chummy? Not fair.
“Is anything the matter?” he added.
“Nothing. Not jealous or anything, no sir.”
“What is this? Surely these can’t be the words of a gentleman accompanied by the exquisite Dragon Princess.”
The Cait Sith laughed, taking my remark to be in jest. I mean, of course it was, but...
“You’re being showered with compliments, Tia.”
“Hm. With my sublime beauty, it can’t be helped.”
Was that so? I couldn’t get with that standard of beauty. Tiamat? She was just a greenish Zeke with wings.
“Just so you know, that one is quite the beauty too. Whether you can see it or not.”
I really couldn’t see it. I had seen a version of Zeke as a little girl though, which was super adorable!
“Humans do have trouble seeing the beauty of the opposite sex in any species other than their own.”
“And you guys don’t, Tia?”
“We do, generally speaking. But some species are sexually attracted to humans, too.”
Orcs, one of the staples of fantasy, for example. Half-demon half-humans, as well as half-human half-elves are common within the fantasy here. The protagonist of Dragonlance, one of the pioneers of epic fantasy and the predecessor to many Isekai fantasies, was also a half-elf, I thought.
“Although Tanis was born of an elven queen violated by a human man.”
“You’re familiar with the material, Tia!?”
The series’ first publication was back in 1984. I doubt that fantasy readers of today are familiar with it. Even I was only a year old or so when it came out. However... If we lose sight of the classics, or laugh it off as outdated, what are we to carry on into future generations? The shoulders we stand on aren’t as insignificant as that.
“I’ve read the whole series. I’ve shed tears for Sturm’s death, too.”
“Woah...”
How should I put this? I felt like I could share a good drink with her.
“Shall we discuss it through the night, Eiji?”
“Of course, Tia.”
“No. We’re leaving early tomorrow. Please get some sleep.”
At Syfer’s exasperated interjection, Tiamat and I shrank apologetically.
“We’re leaving,” I called out from my seat beside the coachman of the leading carriage.
Rays of morning light were beaming down on us. All four carriages were filled to the brim with beet roots; they weighed about a literal ton in total. If the sugar content of rygel was 1%, we should yield about ten kilograms of sugar from this haul.
With a confident neigh, the horses began their march.
“It does look like there is a little more sugar in these, thanks to the good soil and climate.”
“There is? ...You can tell?” I asked Tiamat, who sat beside me.
“I ate a few of them whole. It tasted too sweet to only contain 1% of sugar.”
Ate them whole...? Come to think of it, Baze did the same while in the field. What wild spirits they were.
“Tasted like 4 or 5, maybe even 6% if we’re lucky.”
“That’s super accurate, isn’t it!?”
Wow. Did she have a Brix meter for a tongue?
“All the foodies would be impressed.”
“Yep. I’d give you a standing ovation if I could.”
“That being said, I can’t be too concrete with the numbers. It’s only a guess.”
“That’s still impressive.”
My tongue, on the other hand, couldn’t tell the difference between beer and a low-malt beverage. And I wasn’t struck with awe or anything when I drank from a bottle of Kubota, a super fancy sake. I just felt like I was drinking water. Apologies to the sake connoisseurs of the world.
“Even if it’s 4%, that’s amazing.”
“Mm-hm. Ten kilos turns into eighty kilos. This calls for some forethought, Eiji.”
“Yep.”
I nodded, picking up on my partner’s shift in tone. If that much sugar could be produced from the rygel it had the potential for profitable business. We couldn’t expect Mister Milon to be the sole keeper of the sugar’s ingredients and manufacturing technique. We go about this the wrong way, there will be blood.
Only the inhabitants of modern nations have the privilege of underestimating the value of sugar. Even on Earth, and even on the streets of America, there are boys who commit murder for a couple of bucks.
...And sugar was worth way more than a couple of bucks.
“...I think we need to visit the king.”
“A government cap?”
“Exactly.”
A type of economic control. Even in Japan there are a few examples of this amidst its free-market economy. Tuition for kindergarten, for example. Since the government has set a minimum and maximum price for it, institutions are forced to set their prices within that range. Of course, the goal of these restrictions is to prevent anyone from gaining an outrageous profit. This could be something that becomes necessary for the bartering of sugar in this world.
“We can’t rest easy just yet. The king of this nation is a descendant of the hero who imported white rice into this world.”
; “Yep. Dark clouds ahead.”
“Of course, it all depends on the successful refinement of sugar.”
“Oh, right. We can screw up there.”
We shared a chuckle. Discussing the ramifications of sugar upon this world at this point was, even with the most generous interpretation, counting our chickens before they hatched.
5.
We were never attacked on route, but we were (apparently) being watched the entire time. Of course, I had no ability to detect that. Tiamat and Baze took notice, and they along with Hieronymus kept watch round the clock, so whoever was following us couldn’t find a good time to strike.
The coupling for the night watch, by the way, was Tiamat and Syfer, Baze and Gorun, the archer, then Hieronymus and Maley. I couldn’t help but think that the Cait Sith kept getting the longer end of the stick. She was one of the few women I’d seen that looked her age. Besides, her and Miss Millia were just about the only single women I knew in this world.
Unfortunately, as Miss Maley was sixteen and Miss Millia fifteen, neither of them were within my target range. As an adult with morals, I wasn’t being attracted to highschool-aged girls. I would only ever go for women around my age, give or take five years. The only thing was, in this world, women of that age range were clearly grandmas, visually speaking. It was a dark world.
By the way, Yuri the ranger did not participate in the night watch as he had to prep and take down the camp, in addition to performing other miscellaneous tasks. Oh, and I didn’t either... because there would have been no point to it! I slept in the dog pile comprised of the field workers and Mister Milon’s assistants. I’m sorry, I was useless.
In any case, upon our safe return to Lishua, we received a thunderous welcome by Mister Milon and Mister Garish. They knew when we were returning thanks to Yuri running back to the city ahead of us. He served as our scout.
“Welcome back, Sir Eiji. We have everything ready on our end,” said Mister Milon.
Come again? I don’t get a break, or anything? We’re about to dive right into sugar making.
“We’re back. You’ve prepared things?”
“Of course.”
Isekai Rebuilding Project: Volume 1 Page 11