Hachinan tte, Sore wa Nai Deshou! Chapter 9

Every day in the forest.

“I’m going to the forest.”

“Watch out for the bears and wolves.”

Lately, a week after my first experience hunting guinea fowl, father looks to be a good mood, especially at me who was going out to the forest, as per usual.

Even though I am still a useless 6 year old child, an immature child, but I was contributing to make the family’s dinners more lavish.

Everyone else originally thought it was still impossible for me to help on the land, but now I go out hunting every day for the guinea fowl deemed difficult even for professional hunters.

I also forage for other foodstuffs like wild strawberries, wild edible plants and yam.
And since I started collecting all these ingredients, my reputation in the family has improved.

It seems that everyone was fed up eating only brown bed and salted vegetable soup.
However, that doesn’t mean I will be living in the village indefinitely.

Many villagers, due to the increasing population from expanding the farmlands, were allocated farm work, therefore leading to less people capable of hunting and gathering.

This was also due to wheat being the basic ingredient of bread, an essential food for the people.
With that fact, father had reallocated the people.

Sending a kid out might be dangerous but since I am only the eight son, there is no real loss even if I was dead.

Even for the other kid, they are all busy helping out on the farm or with the businesses.
They are worried if any of the precious manpower were to die, thus the only kid that is allowed to enter the forest is me.

I wonder how a 6 year old kid of a noble family is expected to work, is this world only consisting of poor lower class noble families; is that the reality of humans in this world?

I plan to go to the city after I grow up. I only hope that it will be much better there.

Nonetheless, I will continue my hunting and gathering, at least to improve my own diet.
A guinea fowl as the main dish, with a side of wild edible plants. I can also use the wild strawberries to make jam for that dull and tasteless bread.

Besides all the many items I can gather in the forest, I am also able to practice magic as I please.

“This magic is commonly known as “Report”…”

I can’t really practice flashy attack magic so I mainly stick to support magic like strengthening my body temporarily and recovery/healing magic.

I advance into the depths of the forest while confirming that no large wild animals come close through detection magic.

Today, I decide to try the magic on a new page of the magic book

That new magic is “Report”, which is a magic to literally report something to the user.

A dim and thin light shining in several places came into view when I tried to use it.
If I look closely, the vines of wild yam expand to the ground from the tree’s base, aconite grew naturally.

I see, it reports to me by shining dimly the whereabouts of something.
Although wild yam is valid as food, aconites do not have much purpose in this world.

Since it was a poisonous plant and often used in assassinations.
I felt like I heard in the previous world that poison can be beneficial depending on how you use it but let us leave it for now because it is still unclear on how to properly use it.

Firstly, I began digging up the wild yam via digging magic within the earth system magic which I have improved on.
It just like in the previous world, but if a 6 years old kid was digging up wild yam without help like this, that would the end of the world.

I dig it using “Dig” that was listed on the intermediate magic book as to avoid damaging the wild yam.

With that, a stunning wild yam with an overall length about two meters had been dug out.

It’s a stunning wild yam but it was inconvenient to carry it for too long.
There is no point on selling it either, so I break it into halves and put it into the backpack.

Next is hunting two guinea fowl birds as usual, the other is to fill the backpack with edible wild plant and akebia (TL: a flower plant which produces something similar to tapioca and native to Japan).

“But I can’t understand the ecosystem and the vegetation in this forest…”

In fact, there actually was no flora or fauna that I have never seen before in the forest of Japan in my previous life. The pine, cedar and broadleaf tree, rabbit, wild boar, bears and wolfs, wild yam, edible wild plants and akebia
The flora and fauna is well-known but the order is all mixed up.

Its nature’s grace, many people would say that.
It just that most people are required to be involved in farming so the only people that frequently go hunting and gathering are the professional hunters.

And the basics are to enter the forest with two or more adult males to avoid bears and wolfs. It can be said that it would be impossible for just one adult male to gather easily in the forest.

“Even that professional hunters seem to hunt in a different forest near their home.”

So yeah, except for a hunting groups that passed by, people rarely entered this part of the forest.
It’s quite a wasteful story but the yield from nature blessings without any kind of stability cannot become tax revenue. The farm products which the yields can be calculated to some extent should be given priority. I guess it is a rational move as a lord.

Because this place is a remote place where exchanges with the other territories are few, we cannot afford to not be self-sufficient as it would be directly connected with the starvation.

“Next is…”

When I look for a place that shines faintly, there are fresh fruits that look a lot like loquat in the tree over there.
It’s certainly loquat family kind of fruit, it should also be called loquat in this world.

I peel the skin and try to bite it into but after I use magic to detect poison.
And the taste of sweet fruit juice gradually spreads in my mouth.

I also gathered a fruits similar to akebi and persimmon.

The season now seems to be between spring and summer but when I check it in the book why the tree bears such fruit, it was written that “The fruit season is vary by that tree specimen.”

In other words, trees bear fruit in the spring as well as in the summer.
Moreover in here, some trees wither up even in winter without snow falling and there also specimen that bear fruit in winter.

As expected or rather it can be said for the climate in the southern part of the continent.
I feel that the diet is unusually lacking though.

But I can’t do anything about it as I am just a kid now.
Using a lot of magic, I rushed home to ensure the use of my harvest.

“Good work.”

I handed over the harvest result to mother, as I enjoyed the dinner with two additional side dishes, father suddenly begins to say something to me.

“Hunter’s Efens seem to have witnessed the Talking corpse.”

“Is that really true? Father!”

Eldest brother Kurt raise his voice in surprise.

“Yeah, it was the victim from five years ago.”

Five years ago, father wished to open up the Demon forest that monster resided in, even if it just a small part of it, the Brihedar commander who dispatched out an army tempted by that concession endured a big sacrifice to his army.

You could say it was by luck, father was busy maintaining the public order as about 2,000 soldiers from the other territory was placed in his territory so he did not have to go into the Demon forest.

Of course, uncle also did not come back home.

As Baumeister knight territory’s population increases in small increments, it can be guessed easily how serious a matter is concerning the death of 77 adult males.

Allocation of personnel being focused solely on farming right now and I who go hunting and gathering without a word in the dangerous forest, there were big implications with that news.

And Brihedar commander’s army also, about 1,925 people including the previous family head have not return.
By the public’s view, they were sacrificed to near complete annihilation.

“Will that ghost type monster disturb us for a while after all that had happened…”

“I can say that talking corpses are more preferable as zombie’s are a hassle to subjugate.”

It was a common sense that monster didn’t come out from their territory but this ghost type monster is the only expectation.
Their origin is human so there some individuals that try to return to their home instinctively even if they had become a monster.

According to the picture book, monster like zombies that move only by instinct seems to be a troublesome existence that do harm to human.
This should be subjugated immediately.

Their movement are usually slow and really weak to fire so you can just light it with oil and they’re done for.

However for the talking corpse, we need to deal with it on a case by case basis.
There some case that it becomes fiercer in fear of death so you can only burn it just like the zombies or it would speak to others like normal human beings and die peacefully if their requests are granted.

Those who can communicate to them on some basic level are the priest and a number of clerics but even a common person can put them to rest if they are on the same wavelength.

“Should we call the priest-sama?”

“Master-dono has bad hips from old age. It’s impossible to look for the talking corpse which we don’t even know of its whereabouts.”

In such remote land, the priest was dispatched from the church headquarters in the Imperial city.

There is no sister either so even a few grandmothers in the territory have been helping the church in miscellaneous duties.

Moreover, there very little religious humans in this Baumeister knight territory, I also only participated unwillingly a few times.

Perhaps, as long as this old priest is not called to heaven, a new priest from the Imperial city would not come.

“That’s why, Vel needs to be careful when you enter the forest. In the end, there is a possibility of them trying to get out from our territory.”

While listening to the story from my surprisingly irresponsible father, I also sparked an interest in the talking corpse.

Chapter end