Oh, That’s Not How You Farm. (2)
“I’m telling you, they’re definitely dwarves.”
“I’m telling *you*, they aren’t!”
“They are!”
“They aren’t!”
“They are, they are!”
Are they or aren’t they? Aiden felt his temples throbbing at the chaotic, high-pitched squabbling.
“They’re tiny.”
Jamie was the first to react. Dozens of small heads had popped up from the bushes, and since they were all as stubby as dwarves, the comment had slipped out before he could stop it.
“Hehehe! We *are* a bit small!”
“This is the symbol of cuteness!”
“We’re even smaller than the Iron Dwarves! Like, this much!”
Aiden expected them to be offended, but to his surprise, they just threw their heads back and cackled. They even clung to Jamie, eyes sparkling as they begged him to say more.
“Uhh, uhh…”
Jamie stood completely frozen, terrified that he might accidentally step on one of the little creatures as they zipped around his legs.
He looked at Aiden with a tearful expression that clearly screamed, ‘Help me, Administrative Officer!’ But since Aiden didn’t understand the situation any better than Jamie did, he just stared blankly at Kalisa.
- Do you have any idea?
- No, I don’t.
Aiden and Kalisa finished their silent conversation. They had only known each other for about a year, but after working overtime together for fifteen hours a day, they didn’t need superpowers to read each other’s minds.
Need telepathy? Want to use sound transmission? Then just work overtime.
“Why is this one acting like this! Hey! Giddy up, giddy up!”
“Is it not listening again?”
“Is it sick… or maybe it’s in pain? If that’s the case, we’re in big trouble.”
Just then, worried voices drifted over from the farmers who had been busy clearing the land. It seemed the ox pulling the plow was refusing to work.
For farmers, an ox is a major asset. Especially in a situation like this, where they were trying to cultivate untouched land for the first time, the ox was indispensable. No matter how naturally strong the Northerners were, they couldn’t speed up the clearing process without the strength of an ox.
“Uhehehe, that Moo-Moo is smart!”
“Better than the humans, that’s for sure.”
“If they can’t even figure out what a Moo-Moo knows, why are they even trying to farm? Idiots! Wahahaha!”
The creatures clinging to Jamie suddenly burst into hysterical laughter, rolling on the ground after hearing the farmers’ conversation.
‘Is that funny?’
It didn’t look like a funny situation to him at all. Aiden found the humor of these creatures—who were clearly some kind of demi-human—even harder to grasp. Perhaps it was because they weren’t human, but they were certainly difficult to understand.
However, he couldn’t just brush it off as a joke. Unlike humans, demi-humans usually possessed unique racial traits. And for some reason, these knee-high runts were acting as if they knew exactly why the farmers’ ox had gone on strike.
“Excuse me, do you happen to know why the ox is refusing to plow?”
“Of course we do!”
“How could we not?”
“We aren’t idiots. Uhehe.”
Aiden said one word, and ten came back in return. They huddled together, whispering as if they’d become interested, and then one who was two finger-widths shorter than the others stepped forward as if he were their representative.
“Are you curious? Do you want us to tell you?”
“Yes. I don’t think I know, and neither do the farmers. Why is the ox acting like that?”
“If you’re curious, give us some land.”
“...Excuse me?”
Aiden felt his head throbbing again and pressed his temples, while Jamie and Kalisa burst into laughter as if they’d just heard a hilarious joke.
“I don’t know who you are, but you cannot ask for land just for answering a single question.”
Kalisa replied with a smile, barely hiding the fact that she found them adorable. The creatures puffed out their cheeks or pouted, looking sulky.
“But we need land.”
“Nobody gives us any land.”
Then, they suddenly sat down and started to sniffle.
“Waaaaah!”
“Give us land, land!”
“Land! Land!”
The three of them, as well as the farmers in the distance, were startled by the sound of the children crying and looked over. To anyone watching, it looked like the three of them had made the little ones cry.
“N-no! Why are you suddenly crying like this… Please, just calm down for a second…”
“Hush! Come on, now. If you sit there like that, you’ll get covered in dirt!”
Aiden and Kalisa shared one common trait: neither of them had much talent for comforting others.
“Waaaaaaaah!”
“Waaaaaah!”
At their clumsy attempts at comfort, the creatures were now flailing their stubby limbs and rolling in the dirt, sobbing. Aiden felt like biting his tongue and just passing out. This was PTSD. The familiar scent of a difficult, unreasonable civil petitioner.
But he couldn’t just click his tongue and move on, thinking, ‘What a pain, what a bad day,’ because what they were saying while they cried sounded serious.
“Humans have so much land, but they won’t give us any!”
“They give it to us and then take it back! They lock us up!”
“They just tell us to follow orders! You’re mean!”
“They put handcuffs on us! Shackles! They pinch us! They hit us!”
“Waaaaaah!”
At best, they were demi-humans with the stature of primary school children. It was clear that such small bodies had been abused. By whom? By humans.
“Sniff, can’t you give us some land?”
“We’ll just farm quietly.”
“We’ll tell you why the Moo-Moo doesn’t want to work, too.”
“So please, give us some land.”
They seemed to be done crying, as they stood up, dusted off their clothes, sniffled, and asked again.
“They are Goblins.”
A low voice came from behind them.
“Goblins…?”
Aiden turned to see a middle-aged woman in white robes accompanied by her disciples. It was Lapisha. She looked as if she had arrived in a hurry, her hair still slightly damp.
“Lapisha!”
“We’re here!”
“Wow! You’ve gotten so old!”
“You idiot, humans age really fast!”
As if they hadn’t just been crying, the creatures—no, the demi-humans called Goblins—blatantly committed an act of rudeness, tugging on Lapisha’s hem and beaming at her.
“Excuse me, but what exactly is a Goblin?”
One of Lapisha’s disciples answered in her stead.
“They are a race that is something like a cousin to the dwarves. Well, that’s just a classification humans made for convenience. They call themselves ‘Dwarves’ too. Dwarves who deal with metal and ore are Iron Dwarves, and Goblins are Earth Dwarves, something like that.”
“Ah. I’ve never seen beings like that before.”
“Dwarves are rare, but Goblins are even fewer in number. Even then, most of them end up as slaves the moment they are caught by nobles, so most people never encounter them in their entire lives.”
“Slaves? Isn’t enslaving demi-humans already abolished?”
“The world doesn’t run according to the law.”
At the disciple’s bitter expression, Aiden clicked his tongue and kept his mouth shut.
“Then why do they end up as slaves?”
“It must be their personality.”
“Personality, you say.”
He had only seen them for a moment, but defining a Goblin’s personality was easy—too easy.
‘Children.’
They laughed easily, cried easily, didn’t think about the consequences, and just blurted out whatever they wanted to say. They threw tantrums for what they wanted, and they still felt the pain of past sorrows as if it had happened yesterday.
“Didn’t the dwarves abandon their technology to escape from the nobles’ greed, and didn’t the elves give up on coexistence and hide in the forests?”
“That is correct.”
“But Goblins are different. They cannot give up on the land. Because they won’t stop planting crops, growing flowers, and raising animals, they are no different from a goose that lays golden eggs to the nobles. Just as dwarves are born artisans, Goblins are born farmers. They are the ones who can cultivate fields of flowers in barren, sandy soil.”
“So the lords find them worth coveting.”
“The problem is that because of their unpredictable personality, they don’t farm the way the nobles want them to. The nobles want them to grow wheat on a large scale, but the Goblins think that’s boring and grow wildflowers instead.”
When he heard that, Aiden understood perfectly why Goblins ended up as slaves. They were clearly specialists in farming, but they wouldn’t grow the crops that made money, so the nobles wouldn’t exactly cherish or treasure them.
“So, why does the ox not want to work?”
Aiden, having made up his mind, approached the Goblins and asked.
“Are you going to give us land?”
“If you give it to us, we’ll tell you!”
Aiden gave a small nod to the Goblins, who were looking at him with sparkling eyes, pinning their hopes on him once more.
“The North has plenty of land to spare. Though, I’m not sure if it’s land suitable for farming.”
Even though the population had been increasing recently, the North was still a land where it was easier to encounter beasts than people.
‘I’d be grateful if they planted profitable crops, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t.’
His judgment was that it was better to give away some of the overflowing land and increase the population. Besides, if they were farming experts, they might be a great help to the farmers.
“Are you really going to give it to us?”
“Really?”
“What are the conditions?”
They clapped and cheered, but having been burned before, they cautiously asked about the conditions.
“You have to register your family registry. If you end up growing and selling any crops, you’ll have to pay taxes, too.”
“Taxes! We’ve never done anything like that.”
“That’s right. Humans just took everything away. It was ours!”
“…I apologize on their behalf.”
“Why?”
“Because it was something humans did.”
At Aiden’s words, the Goblins looked at each other and burst into laughter, rolling on the dirt floor again.
How many times was this now, them rolling around?
“Uhehehe! You’re apologizing for what bad humans did. You’re like an idiot!”
“Uhihi. That’s right. It’s not like the bad humans are reflecting on their actions anyway!”
“…There is some truth to that.”
He’d been hit by that one. Just because they were round, small, and cute didn’t mean they were just children—he felt that reality right now.
Thwack, thwack.
Seeming to be done laughing, the Goblins dusted themselves off and walked with their short legs toward the farmers who had been watching them from earlier.
“Give us a pickaxe!”
“Yes? T-this one?”
“Yes.”
The Goblin who took the pickaxe from the farmer struck the surface of the ground with all his might.
As if that were the signal, the other Goblins each struck a spot on the ground—thump, thump.
Rumble, rumble, PSSSHHHHHH!
“W-what?!”
As soon as the Goblins stopped their pickaxing, water erupted from the ground as if it had been waiting for the signal.
A jet of water soared high into the sky like a whale blowing its spout. The farmers fell backward, their eyes wide, making strange noises at the unbelievable sight.
Moooooo.
The ox finally lifted its feet and let out a long cry.
“How scared must the Moo-Moo have been? If they had dug just a little bit more, it would have turned into beef stew!”
“How did they pick this spot, of all places? It seems like this is the only place in the vicinity where the hot water flowing deep underground shoots up.”
“Uhehehe! Humans are so unlucky!”
“Bust, it’s a bust!”
The jet of water was still soaring high.
Whoosh—
The water droplets, scattering like mist, were clearly filled with warmth.