Crop Variety (2)

Thanks to Grow Big and Strong, I had come to realize that farming in this place was going to be remarkably easy.

If all you had to do was scatter seeds and watch them sprout on their own, it hardly even qualified as agriculture. You just tilled a patch of ground, sowed the seed, and reaped the harvest once it matured. At this rate, it seemed far wiser to branch out and secure a variety of crops rather than sticking solely to wheat.

Thwack! Thud!

"That should do it for now. Let's head back."

"@#%$."

First things first. I called out to Ludwig, who was vigorously working his shovel.

We were currently downriver, standing on a wide stretch of sandy bank. I had come down here to gather more sand, which was an essential ingredient for mixing another batch of cement. Ludwig may have been a stranger to many things, but as a career soldier, his shoveling technique was nothing short of art. Thanks to his relentless pace, we filled our quota in record time.

Fwoooosh! Splash!

Just as we were loading the sand sacks to leave, an awe-inspiring creature breached the surface of the river. It was the size of a full-grown whale, arching majestically before crashing back into the water. Only recently had I come to grips with reality: that thing wasn't a mammal. It wasn't a whale at all, but an unnaturally colossal fish.

It's a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fantasy world, so I guess there are plenty more leviathans swimming around in these waters.

I glanced over to see Ludwig's reaction. He stood rooted in place, staring blankly at the rippling current as though his eyes were playing tricks on him. Well, fair enough. I hadn't expected a river to harbor whale-sized monsters either when I first arrived.

"Hey, old man. You're going to have to get used to this stuff. That's just the kind of place we're in."

"……."

"No matter what pops up next, you're only going to waste energy being shocked. Let's move."

My gentle persuasion seemed to shake him out of his daze. Honestly, with a talking gorilla standing right next to him on a daily basis, I didn't think anything else should have been capable of surprising him.

I handed the sand-laden sacks over to Ggobongi. He took them without complaint, obediently following my orders. He was becoming quite acclimated to the domestic routine.

I wonder how he'd react if he saw the giant crabs and oversized crayfish by the lake?

A flicker of curiosity crossed my mind, but I had no intention of trekking all the way over there today. If we didn't finish building the shelter soon, I would be forced to squeeze both Ggobongi and Largo into our cramped cave camp. Time was our most precious lifeline.

Ggobongi might squeeze in, but Largo would be utterly miserable in there.

We wasted no time and made a straight line back to the shelter. Perhaps because we now moved as a sizeable pack, or simply by sheer luck, not a single predatory beast ambushed us on the return march.

Come to think of it, we haven't been attacked much lately.

Aside from stragglers seeking us out or cross-path encounters like with Ggobongi and Ludwig, outright predatory raids had dwindled to zero. It was possible the predators of the Forest of the Four Seasons had begun recognizing our perimeter as marked territory. Or perhaps every creature in the woods was busy hunkering down for the impending winter.

Whatever the case, I just hoped another raccoon wouldn't show up leading a stampede of monsters like last time.

"All right. Back to work."

"@%%#."

"We'll get to the farming once this building is finished."

Laying bricks to build a house was one of those tasks that looked deceptively simple in tutorial videos, but proved brutally demanding in practice. Someone might argue that I had slapped together a makeshift oven and a blast furnace without much trouble, but those were small structures. A residential shelter was massive; a slight misalignment in the foundation or a crooked row could compromise the entire structural integrity, forcing you to tear the whole thing down and start over.

I have to keep the levels straight and ensure the mortar spreads evenly between the joints. It's a genuine pain.

On top of that, I had to frame out openings for intermediate partition doors. Why no windows? Factor in window frames and glass panes, and the construction schedule would balloon out of control. This place was fundamentally a barn and emergency bunker, not a luxury villa, so there was no need to overcomplicate the design.

However, an enormous conundrum remained.

How the hell am I supposed to build the ceiling?

I looked up at the open sky. The ceiling had to be exceptionally sturdy if it was going to survive the violent natural disasters of this forest, yet I didn't even know where to begin framing it. A simple flat roof might seem easiest, but that was out of the question.

Even if the ceiling underneath is square, the outer roof must be pitched like a triangle.

Only a steep pitch would allow snow to slide off naturally. Building a flat roof here was an invitation for the entire structure to collapse under a blizzard. Having survived real blizzards in this forest, I knew firsthand that the weight of accumulated snow defied imagination. I had experienced my fair share of heavy snow during military service, but clearing it entirely alone in the wild gave me an acute, visceral respect for its crushing force.

For now, I need to frame the layout with space for a fireplace in mind.

Leaving the ceiling puzzle aside for the moment, we focused on laying the brick walls. With both Ludwig and Ggobongi pitching in, the work progressed at blistering speed. In roughly an hour, all four perimeter walls were standing tall. We would need additional reinforcement against potential avalanches later on, but that could wait.

It really is towering.

Because the interior had to accommodate Largo's immense frame, the walls rose to the height of a two-story apartment. Just looking up at the cavernous opening where the roof should go gave me a headache. Still, there was no getting around it. I fired up the Gallery interface.

I joked, but I had every intention of ensuring it stayed upright. Cutting corners in construction was an unforgivable sin that invited disaster.

Better build thicker reinforcement layers into the walls just in case.

To brace against potential snowdrifts, we added secondary courses to the brickwork. By the time ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that extra hour of masonry was done, Passing Dwarf had uploaded a fresh guide to the board.

I read through Passing Dwarf's blueprints with painstaking care. A coffered ceiling, as the name implied, used interlocking horizontal and vertical beams arranged in a crisscross grid, resembling the Chinese character for a well. What we needed most were substantial timber logs cut and squared ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to precise lengths.

Which meant one thing: Ggobongi's workload had just spiked.

"Hey, Ggobongi. I'll measure out the lengths and widths, and you handle the felling and trimming. Got it?"

"Unfair. Exhausted."

"Cut the chatter and get to work."

"Bad man."

"Fine, no dinner for you tonight. Here I am building you a house, and you give me this kind of attitude?"

"Actually, love work. Body itching to chop."

"Good. Let's grab a quick bite first, then get moving."

A worker needed a proper meal in his belly to put in honest labor. After a hearty snack, Ggobongi set off to process logs while Ludwig and I turned our attention to breaking ground for the field. Explaining the fundamentals to Ludwig before bed last night had paid off; he was handling his end smoothly without needing constant direction.

Once the wheat comes in, maybe I can finally bake real bread.

The thought of eating processed, oven-baked carbohydrates after all this time made my mouth water. Someone might ask: why not just buy bread off the Auction House? The Auction House was overflowing with food from countless worlds, so why go through the grueling toil of growing it yourself? Wasn't it a massive waste of precious survival time?

All valid points. Yet this was about cultivating my own self-reliance. As the old saying went: if you want to become wealthy, start by making your bed every morning. It stemmed from the same core principle. Forging something with my own two hands, wresting fruit from the dirt—that sense of accomplishment was how a person grew piece by piece. A progression of character, not just martial prowess. Putting it into words felt a bit sentimental, but the sentiment remained true.

"#$%!"

"Hm? What's over there?"

"@#%%."

"Ah, hit a massive boulder? Hold on, I'll help you pry it out."

It was time to till the earth.

A holy knight.

A consecrated warrior who carried sacred faith within his breast, drawing strength from unshakeable devotion.

"Dig right around the edges here."

"Understood."

And occasionally, that divine strength was requisitioned as agricultural brute labor.

Ludwig drove his shovel into the soil beside Grylls, turning over the earth with measured cadence. When he first heard they were going to farm, his heart had fluttered with quiet enthusiasm, but the physical reality proved far more grueling than anticipated. First and foremost, clearing subterranean stones was a maddening chore. Embedded rocks fought the blade at every thrust, sabotaging the furrow and jarring his bones. When they struck boulders too massive to dislodge, they had no choice but to abandon the trench and carve another line elsewhere.

Through this painstaking labor, they finally wrested a viable plot from the wilderness. Yet clearing the dirt was only the preface.

Will it truly sprout instantly?

He had already heard the account from Grylls. The supplier who traded for the Soil of the Forest of the Four Seasons claimed that crops sprang forth almost instantaneously. They hadn't even planted the seeds directly inside the mystical dirt; merely dusting a handful of it over ordinary soil like fertilizer had been enough to trigger explosive maturation.

Hearing that had left Ludwig with a faint prick of disappointment. To him, the true joy of farming lay in watching seedlings break the soil and inch ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠toward the sun day by day through patient stewardship. If a crop ballooned to maturity in the blink of an eye, the quiet satisfaction of nurturing life would vanish before one could even savor it.

Still, there is no room for vanity.

Survival hung in the balance; romantic notions of pastoral labor were luxuries for peaceful times. True farming could wait until he escaped the Forest of the Four Seasons. No matter how long that ordeal took, he resolved to find a way out within ten years. As long as breath remained in his lungs, liberation was not an impossibility.

"Here are the seeds. Just scatter them evenly across the furrows."

"Thank you."

Ludwig received the leather pouch from Grylls. Inside were tiny, unassuming grains of wheat. Once cast into the prepared earth, they were destined to yield golden sheaves.

Swish! Swish!

Walking side by side, Ludwig and Grylls cast handfuls of grain across the freshly turned soil. Soon, those dormant seeds would awaken and burst into golden stalks. Just to be certain, they ran a line from the river hose and drenched the plot with generous streams of water.

And then...

RUUUUMBLE—SHWSHHHHHH!

Just as Grow Big and Strong had attested, the ground heaved. Green shoots erupted through the crust, swelling, stretching, and golden stalks skyrocketing toward the sky in a violent rush of botanical fury. The sheer spectacle held Grylls and Ludwig spellbound for a breath—before both men slowly tilted their heads in sheer bewilderment.

"Why is it...?"

"It is... far too large."

It wasn't merely overgrown; it was monstrous. The wheat stalks soared upward like bamboo timber, forcing both men to crane their necks back until their vertebrae clicked. The crowns reached heights rivaling Largo the giraffe.

The seeds were supposed to have come from an ordinary world outside, so how on earth had they mutated into lumbering giants?

"Munch, munch, munch."

"Hey! Woah, stop that! You can't eat that yet! Shoo!"

"Get back! Away with you!"

The ears of grain hung at such a convenient elevation that Largo had simply stepped up and started grazing on them like browse from an orchard tree. It took their combined efforts to shove the giant giraffe away before they could inspect what remained.

Size was one thing, but culinary value was what truly mattered. Whether they milled this monstrous harvest into flour for bread or rolled it into noodles, it had to be palatable. Grylls drew his sword instead of a sickle, preparing to fell the towering stalks.

Flap-flap-flap!

A solitary bird dropped out of the sky and landed near the crop. It was a tiny brown sparrow, no different from the mundane songbirds found in ordinary fields beyond the barrier.

"What's this? Where did sparrows come from?"

"Hmm..."

Just as the two men traded puzzled glances—

WHIRRRRRRR-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP-FLAP!

An ominous, deafening roar descended from the heavens. It sounded like an apocalyptic cloud of locusts roaring across a plain, yet Grylls knew at once that it wasn't insects. A locust swarm produced a high-pitched, droning hum; this sound was heavier, rhythmic, and visceral.

It was the synchronized beating of thousands of feathered wings.

Wait, why all of a sudden...?

Before his thoughts could even finish forming, the dark cloud broke through the canopy.

"CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!"

"CHREEE-CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!"

A ravenous legion of sparrows, blotting out the light like a biblical plague of locusts, dove straight toward the freshly grown, skyscraper wheat.

Grylls and Ludwig stood frozen in stunned disbelief as the feathered storm engulfed the field.

Flap-flap-flap! Flutter-flutter!

Within moments, the flock gorged itself to bursting, took wing in a deafening flurry, and vanished back into the deep shadows of the forest.

All that remained behind were stripped, barren stalks standing like desolate toothpicks in the dirt. It had not been an invasion of locusts. It had been an aerial blitzkrieg of sparrows.

"...Fuck."

"...Damnable wretches."

Staring at the ruin, both men muttered curses under their breath.

Their homelands, their races, and their native tongues were entirely different, yet in this singular, tragic moment, their minds were bound in absolute harmony.

That bird was an enemy of the people.