The Young Tree Takes Stock (1)

I had never needed to study geography before.

Which made sense, really.

All I could see was the forest around me and whatever scenery happened to be near my wooden relics. A certain neighborhood back-mountain sapling had absolutely no use for human-style geography.

I had once skimmed the maps in the village chief's study for fun, but since I never had occasion to use that knowledge, none of it had stuck.

Never did I imagine the day would come when I would be studying, in earnest, the maps that had been carried from the village chief's study to the library.

I compared the landscape visible to me against the maps. And so, it turned out—

Our village sat in what was commonly called the Forest of Serenity.

True to the name, aside from towering trees and dense undergrowth, an utterly ordinary forest filled the entire half-kilometer radius behind me. Most of the tree species there were difficult to log, and the land offered no worthwhile resources, so it was a vast wilderness the feudal authorities had simply given up on and left to rot.

And in the heart of that forest stood the Elf Village.

Hundreds of buildings came into view. As if to say that clear-cutting the whole forest would be more trouble than it was worth, they had been built tangled around living trees, using the trunks as pillars.

Countless elves went about their daily lives between the buildings. The village had grown large enough that beyond hunting, some elves ran general stores, and I spotted one chatting with a human merchant.

"So this is that clear, pure water the mages in the capital have been making lately?"

"That's what they say! One sip and your mind feels refreshed—water that supposedly prevents disease, no less! Hard-won magic water brought all the way from the capital. Imagine how pleased that so-called Sacred Tree would be if you offered it up! Come now, buy it!"

"Hmm...? If I'm only ever receiving from the Tree, I feel like I ought to be giving something back."

The elf shopkeeper hesitated, eyeing the water bottles.

Wait, what? Isn't that just... water? I could practically smell the pond muck, like it had been scooped out of the nearby lake moments ago.

That's one step away from an outright scam, isn't it?

I paused my tour of the domain and lifted the little water spirits huddled together at the stall with my gaseous mana.

Here you go, everyone—your favorite plain pure water.

I uncapped the bottles and dropped them in one by one, and they bobbed about contentedly. Pond water went in; fresh, cool water with not a trace of earth came out.

"This is a limited-time offer, I—huh?!"

"What's going on? Why are the spirits climbing in on their own? This isn't ordinary water at all, is it? I'm not buying it. Not buying!"

Yoo-hoo! I just saved a good, honest elf from being swindled by a wicked human.

Having rescued the shopkeeper for the moment, I widened my view and surveyed the whole village again.

A bustling, lively village spread out before me.

Wow. So we really are quasi-city-sized, aren't we.

Looking down at a glance, the scale of a thousand people finally sank in. And most of those people could supposedly draw a bow in an emergency? At this point I really wouldn't need to worry about slave traders anymore.

Shifting my gaze slightly from the village, I could see the farm fields. It was winter, so nothing grew there—just bare soil.

Thermia was walking the length of the farm, agonizing over whether she'd need ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to relocate the bow shrine if the fields expanded come spring.

No need to fret about that anymore. The entire farm now fell within the Divine Domain Zone, bow shrine or no bow shrine.

Thermia, you don't have to worry about that. My range has grown. Wait a little while and you'll feel the difference yourself.

"Huh? Yes?"

Thermia startled and turned toward where I was.

Anyway. Farms were roughly covered.

Beyond the farmland, I wandered the forest here and there. Scattered among the trees, I spotted small settlements—not of elves, but humans.

They were so tiny that "village" seemed generous; more like clusters of shanties belonging to people who'd fled their taxes. The inhabitants looked gaunt and threadbare, their households mired in poverty.

Well, well. So humans had come to live in our forest after all.

Then again, it would have been stranger if they hadn't.

Widening my view past the forest's edge, the fief itself came into view—a chaotic jumble of woods and mountains, hills and cliffs.

I could see why this was a backwater territory.

Village to village, city to city—straight-line distances were closer than I'd expected. But the roads, naturally formed as they wound and twisted between the terrain, did nothing to help the flow of trade.

If I were the lord of this land, I'd have clutched my head in despair. How is anyone supposed to fix that with human hands?

Curious whether the lord was despairing right at this moment, I searched for the Lord's Castle. It was still beyond my domain's edge. I couldn't even see the city where the slave market had been held.

Our fief is bigger than I thought, then.

Even compared with neighboring territories on the map, it was large. Big enough, certainly, for a second son with a claim to the throne to get exiled to.

As I marveled and looked around, I noticed my gaseous mana catching the wind and drifting off over the fief all on its own.

The territory residents—who had nothing to do with the Elf Village—were already feeling changes in their bodies, talking to one another in confusion.

Whoa, whoa. Hold on just a second.

I hurriedly reeled in the gaseous mana. A patch of it that had been drifting through one human village condensed into solid mana and dropped with a plip.

Phew. I think I got that bit back.

Even widening my view from that human village, I could still see wisps of gaseous mana flying loose across the territory.

So roughly one percent got recalled...?

Confusion rippled across the whole territory.

Men who had been brawling by the collar in a tavern froze mid-swing and patted down their own bodies. Drinkers so pickled their noses had gone wide opened their bleary eyes in perfect sobriety.

So, um. You see.

I caused a major incident.

Not that I did it on purpose, mind you.

My thoughts grew hazy.

How should I put this...

It's already a disaster, so does it really matter at this point?

Yoo-hoo! I'll just do better next time. That's the spirit.

The Forest of Serenity had always been peaceful; under normal circumstances I could have simply watched it undisturbed.

After all, all I could see of the Elf Village was the sprawling graveyard and the village outskirts—hardly anything that demanded my attention.

But now that I could see the entire village, all the little commotions I'd never witnessed came flooding into view.

The general store, for one.

Someone was being swindled right out in the open, and it didn't feel right for me to just stand there watching, did it?

Couldn't I at least throw a wrench into clear-cut crimes?

Just as Elder Eldrin said, I did need to guard against the village becoming dependent on me. But still.

Then a good idea occurred to me.

What if I made use of the Divine Domain Zone?

Checking the message window I'd been putting off, I saw that becoming the Sacred Young Tree had raised my Divinity level.

A rise in Divinity level also meant I now had room to weave new mysteries into the Divine Domain Zone.

First, I needed to give the Domain Mysteries some careful thought.

They seemed to have a certain limit to their power.

Fatigue, as a concept, could be divided into physical fatigue and mental fatigue. And perhaps because that power split down the middle accordingly, those under its influence tended to have bodies brimming with stamina while their minds failed to keep pace.

Since the village's work was mostly physical labor, I'd left it alone for the time being. But I had also glimpsed that strange future of endless branches and roots, which suggested that an imbalance of body and mind—a disruption of harmony—was something that needed adjusting.

Excess stamina was already overflowing, after all.

A clean, tidy balance.

If I made the third mystery Unaccumulating Fatigue, I could probably create a village that never slept.

But that would be pushing something already beyond nature's balance even further, and I wasn't sure we needed to go that far. Though I suppose humans do, by nature, exceed the balance of the natural world.

So how about a different third mystery instead?

Until now, my mysteries had acted upon people themselves. This one would act upon the domain itself.

When someone committed an injustice, the Tireless Stamina and Tireless Spirit would be reclaimed from ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that person, leaving them unable to receive the aid of my miracles.

Good and evil are complicated matters.

Rather than drawing a hard line between virtue and vice, I set morality and duty as the standard—refined down, in the end, to something as simple as "injustice."

For the punishment itself, I kept it light: nothing more than the reclamation of a miracle. That would minimize any side effects, while leaving actual resolution to happen within the framework of society.

Yes, this seems good.

Though I had no idea at all how the mechanism would actually play out. Well, it had applied according to my intent, so it would all work out somehow.

I'd framed it broadly as a matter of principle—surely nothing could go wrong with that?

An elf child stole the jerky from a market stall and bolted.

With those quick little legs, the escape should have been easy—but the very next instant, my gaseous mana fled the child in avoidance. The miracle vanished in a heartbeat.

"Huh?"

The elf kid froze in panic and flopped to the ground. It was the rebound of having pushed a body too hard on the strength of a miracle—back at ordinary stamina now, the child's legs simply refused to carry on.

"You little rascal!"

The general store owner, meanwhile, came sprinting over, hale and hearty, and grabbed the kid.

"Is that what your parents taught you? Go fetch them, right now!"

"My parents are dead. There's no one to fetch."

"Oh—oh my. Is... is that so? ...Well then. Eat that, and let's have a little talk, shall we?"

Flustered, the shopkeeper sat the orphan down and fed him first, scolding him before anything else—but with clear allowance made for his circumstances.

Yoo-hoo! Looks like it's working properly.

Without me ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lifting so much as a twig, the miracle reclaimed itself, and just as naturally returned.

The punishment was mild enough that even on the ambiguous occasions—cases where I couldn't quite tell whether reclamation had been warranted—the villagers could sort things out with good old-fashioned flexibility.

No problems, none of the ones I'd dreaded. Everything was going swimmingly.

Right up until it wasn't.

"Some of the village elders have collapsed!"

Wha—?

There it was. The exact problem I'd dreaded.

Thermia, who had been busy managing the village-wide confusion brought on by the domain's expansion, came scrambling over in a panic.

"Their bodies had felt strange, so they wondered if maybe their miracles had been reclaimed, but they just kept living as they always had—and then they all collapsed from overwork!"

Why would that get reclaimed? Hold on—let me check.

Had I applied it wrong?

Sweeping the village, I hurriedly examined the collapsed elder elves.

Not a familiar face—not one of the original villagers. One of the elves who had immigrated recently.

Once the village began selling farm tools, iron ore, and hand-copied books to the outside world, this one had maneuvered shrewdly in the middle of it all, amassing money and clawing their way up to an elder's seat. Several of this type had cropped up in the village of late—you might call them the new merchant class, born of the village's transformation.

And now nearly all of those merchants lay groaning, collapsed.

What in the world is going on?

Thermia trembled, looking a little frightened.

"D-did we do something wrong?"

Her voice was very, very careful.

I can't say for sure, but calm down first. As I already announced to the village, miracles are reclaimed of their own accord according to principle. This wasn't me getting angry and yanking them back out of spite.

"Ah... so it isn't that the Tree grew wrathful and punished us by hand—it's that we strayed from the discipline the Tree set, through our own failings."

Yes, more or less. Though I never actually set down anything so formal as a discipline.

Having reassured Thermia, I asked:

Could these people have done something wrong as a group?

I checked an elder of the same merchant class who had not collapsed.

A genuinely admirable person—one who liked to spend the money they earned on donations for the village's development or on helping those around them. Also an elder of the original villagers from the start, as it happened.

The collapsed ones, by contrast, had clawed their way up from poor elf to elder rank through ruthless grinding, and old habits died hard—they were still, at heart, misers.

So that's it.

As they say, it is hard for the rich to enter heaven.

Regardless of one's personal virtue, pile up enough ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wealth and a certain... inevitability seems to set in. My own wariness toward greed, and the choice I'd made to filter out that future of endless branches and roots, must both have been reflected in my mystery.

Now, what was that religious solution again...?

Tell everyone they've been swept away too deep into greed. Instruct them to let go, to look around them, and to find something truly worth devoting themselves to.

Some of them were decent sorts. They'd sort themselves out, surely.

This world is truly beautiful, so I'd like everyone to take their eyes off gold and jewels for a while and learn to enjoy what's around them.

From the next day onward, the new merchant class threw themselves into village service.

And then, declaring that they would devote themselves to the Sacred Tree and wash away the filth of worldly temptation, they offered me an enormous hoard of wealth.

The wealth piled up in the forest clearing.

Yoo-hoo! I'm rich now.

...Why, though?