The Fussing Young Tree (7)
"A tree that grows gem fruits?!"
Thermia's jaw dropped.
They're not gems, they're mana stones.
"Isn't that the same thing?!"
...Fair point.
I manipulated the gaseous mana. The gem fruits plucked free with a gentle tug, harvested with ease, and I passed one over to Thermia.
"Wow!"
The girl tapped the gem fruit lightly, huffed on it, and polished it bright with her sleeve. When she held it up to the sunlight, it scattered light like a genuine jewel.
"It really is a lump of gem, isn't it?"
Well, it certainly is pretty to look at.
It would make a decent ornament, too.
"Since it's a fruit, can I eat it?"
Should you, though?
That wasn't exactly what I made them for.
Thermia bit into the gem fruit. Mana stones weren't quite as hard as actual gems, so it crunched and split apart. The girl chewed the mineral debris for a moment, and then her expression crumpled.
"Ugh."
Not tasty?
"It's like chewing on a rock. Honestly, it's no different from a regular mana stone."
Thermia spat it into her palm.
"I should give this one to the rabbit."
So it really is no different from an ordinary mana stone?
"Right. Should it be?"
To my eyes, it was just a little different.
The Fruit Tree Mine had been created using the principles of the Natural Circulation Method.
The Natural Circulation Method allowed one to obtain the purest mana closest to nature — but that didn't mean the mana remained exactly as nature had made it.
The mana stone had passed through a fruit tree and turned into fruit, so some change was only to be expected.
"Should we bring the rabbit over and feed it one?"
Let's do that. While you're at it, bring an earth spirit too. I need to check how the harvesting works.
"Huh? Can't we just pick the fruit?"
Right now the fruit trees can produce mana stone fruits easily thanks to the influence of my will. From now on, though, they'll probably need an earth spirit's help.
A fruit tree could manage on its own, technically — but it would be a strain, and that didn't look good for the tree's health.
Thermia returned to the village and came back with the rabbit.
It was wearing a collar, apparently from its time serving as the Rabbit Knight.
So the one who'd said being a Rabbit Knight was beneath it had decided to play knight today out of sheer boredom. Though the Water Drop Girl, its supposed squire, was nowhere to be seen.
Where's Bang-ul-i?
"She flew off, saying minerals bore her."
Is it proper for a knight to abandon her post and forsake her word?
"Well, the Rabbit Knight isn't so different from an ordinary knight, is it?"
I offered a gem fruit to the rabbit, which looked thoroughly worn out.
Give me your professional opinion. Can you taste a difference from a mana stone?
The rabbit gnawed at the fruit with its front teeth. The moment it did, its red eyes went wide and round, and its constantly working jaw stopped dead.
That's... a different reaction.
Well? How is it?
The rabbit gave no answer — it just kept eating, fast. The fruit vanished in the blink of an eye.
Tastier than the regular stuff?
The rabbit smacked its lips and twitched its nose.
It kept glancing sideways at the other gem fruits hanging on the surrounding fruit trees, then squeaked and squeaked as if to say it couldn't judge properly on a sample size of one.
"Sounds like it likes it!"
Apparently so.
Squeak, squeak.
See, the mana purity drops ever so slightly — and I think that actually makes it easier for living creatures to handle. Raw mana stones are so much nature itself that they're downright dangerous for people to work with.
It was strange that the rabbit ate raw mana stones in the first place. For everyone else, they were very dangerous.
"Oh! I think I've heard something about that somewhere. They say mages use mana stones, but never use them as-is. Something about how they're more dangerous than you'd think."
Really? I suppose it's a similar case.
Squeak, squeak.
The rabbit kept squeaking insistently.
"What's it saying?"
It wants one more. Try harvesting one yourself this time, without my help.
"Okay."
Thermia picked up the earth spirit that had, in fact, been sitting on her head this whole time. She fed it a bit of mana stone powder and made her request.
"Please help this fruit tree bear gem fruits."
When she applied the spirit to the tree, it exerted itself. The fruit tree responded, sending out fine roots. The mana stone underground was embraced and slowly absorbed, bit by bit.
A gem fruit began to form, slow and patient.
Before long the fruit was complete, and the girl harvested it.
"Thank you for your help."
After promising the fruit tree some fertilizer, she cracked the fruit open and handed it to the rabbit.
Then she ground up a gem fruit and fed it to the earth spirit, whose surface drank in the powdered mana.
Thermia's face turned strange.
"So we're paying the earth spirit for its help... with a fruit that the earth spirit helped grow?"
It felt like getting fresh water from a water spirit by paying it with fresh water.
Perpetual motion, in other words.
"Is it really okay to do this?"
It... really is.
So this is what it felt like to be a boss making money off his employees' labor, huh.
The Fruit Tree Mine was designated a restricted area.
Mana stones were simply too valuable for it to be any other way.
Truthfully, I doubted there was a single elf bold enough to steal within a Holy Land even without the restriction — doing so while I was watching openly would be an exceptionally foolish move.
Our village mandated literacy education, so the residents had at least that much common sense.
But a rational way of curbing greed was never meant to rely on willpower alone.
The most important thing was removing the very cause of temptation from daily life.
It isn't easy to avoid gambling when you live in a gambling den, after all. Call it the importance of environment.
Along with the restriction, we hired security staff.
"Big brother, haven't we made it in life?"
"Told you, didn't I? Going from thieves to thief-catchers — that's making it for sure."
"Hoo-ah! None of this would've happened if not for the Young Tree watching over us."
The Thief Trio began their patrol.
Former thieves guarding against current thieves.
Specialist work belongs to specialists.
Even if the arrangement is a little strange.
Once the Fruit Tree Mine opened, the village's mana stone supply smoothed out, and a great many spirit-related fields began to activate.
Where the water spirits had long since woven themselves deep into village life, the earth spirits had only ever held as much influence as pebbles on the roadside.
Communication with them was so difficult that it required mana stones, and until now the cost-benefit had been hopeless. You can't hand over a mana stone just to repair a cracked flowerpot.
And so our Pebble Girl, even after creating her earth spirits, hadn't gotten to distribute the workload at all — instead she was dragged out every single time a building needed redesigning.
Villagers, too, had to do with their own hands the work the earth spirits could have helped with.
But now everything had changed.
Thanks to an advance payment of mana stones to a few earth spirits, any villager could now put in a request.
They couldn't keep one in every household like the water spirits, but they could ask the earth spirits stationed here and there around the village.
And thanks to that, Pebble Girl got her old life back — one of sleeping all day long.
Looking down at the wooden bed, the little girl truly did sleep the whole day through.
Even when the Water Drop Girl draped a handkerchief over her like a blanket, yanked it off, and covered her again, over and over, she slept on without a single reaction.
Watching it left me with complicated feelings.
Lately I'd been seeing quite a pleasant sight: the girl being dragged around by Thermia on tours of the village.
She complained about it constantly, sure — but the girl who'd done nothing but sleep was now interacting smoothly with the villagers.
Was there some way to help her along? Her personality was what it was, so I didn't need her to be lively — I just wanted her to live among people and get along with them.
To put it bluntly, it felt like watching the kid who aced every exam in school somehow never get a job and just drift through life unemployed.
Which is fine, technically. Yeah.
When I created the earth spirits, I'd half hoped Pebble Girl might grow mentally the way the Water Drop Girl had.
But nothing of the sort had happened.
She'd said she'd create the result first and grasp a higher consciousness later — and then she'd just gotten clever about the manufacturing and left it at that.
Maybe the environment was the problem?
The forest clearing, home to just me and the Water Drop Girl, might be so peaceful that it was removing any chance for Pebble Girl to change.
Maybe it was time to make her a little sibling?
After the Water Drop Girl got a sibling, she'd grown a touch more mature — perhaps Pebble Girl would change too.
She'd done liquid and solid already.
Gaseous mana, then?
I'd have to think the method over.
"There was a mana stone mine here all along..."
The Teacher, returned from the Count's domain, muttered as he surveyed the changed village. He looked somewhat deflated.
I understood the feeling. He'd worked himself to the bone developing a village with nothing to its name — even undertaking manuscript transcription projects — only for a mana stone deposit to have been sitting right under his nose.
On the bright side, the transcription project was what got mandatory literacy education off the ground.
Sorry I hid it from you. Our village was simply too small until now. I didn't say anything because greed invites trouble, and small things get swallowed whole. But Velesa and the Crown Prince are on our side now and seem to have settled into the royal court well enough, and our territory belongs to the King — so I figured it'd be safe.
"No, my lord, you hid it well. Had it come to light sooner, the previous King would have made his move."
Really?
"A mana stone mine on the second son's territory? They'd have dispatched troops under the pretext of protecting a military resource and interfered at every turn. Our village wouldn't have survived the power struggles."
Whoa. That's terrifying.
"These days, thanks to the sword you granted the Crown Prince and the favorable influence it's had on the kingdom's politics, the King does seem to view our village differently — but there's no telling how things would have played out before that. Most likely a dispatched noble administrator would have reshaped the village however he pleased."
So we'd walked along a cliff's edge without even knowing it.
Chilling stuff. So — did you meet the Count safely? How's that territorial war shaping up?
The Teacher walked to an empty spot and leaned against a wall.
"Word is that Priest Borlidon is secretly assembling a coalition of slaveholding lords as he meets with them one by one. Apparently they intend to strike before the eastern rebellion is fully settled — they're aiming for a winter territorial war."
Is it even wise to move large forces in winter?
Seasons mattered enormously — the royal army itself had only been able to move after winter passed and spring arrived, despite the rebellion having broken out in the east.
"It won't be wise. They're counting on catching everyone off guard."
Even though they'd already been found out.
Caught red-handed by me, Priest Borlidon was apparently just sweeping it under the rug and gathering his lords anyway.
Is this what you'd call blind arrogance from a man built on decades of corruption? Perhaps he'd long since prepared himself a way to dodge responsibility for failure.
"We really ought to support the Count. His forces are at a numerical disadvantage — though I'll need to discuss the details with the village chief first."
If the Count falls, that's a disaster for us, right? There isn't a single other lord around here calling for the abolition of slavery, is there?
"A very great disaster. An elf village surrounded exclusively by lords who fancy elf slaves would struggle to survive in the long run. Our territory may belong to the King, but it would be anything but a good situation."
It really was rather frightening.
If any of our village's elves stepped outside our borders, wouldn't they make the perfect victim of a trumped-up charge and quietly disappear?
Then let's help the Count. Talk it over carefully with the chief. The spirits have joined the neighborhood watch, by the way. It'll look quite different from what you're imagining.
"Understood. By the way — have you received no word from the capital?"
Hm?
The capital? Velesa does send letters. She said the King wants more of the tribute fruit. I'm still deciding whether to bless one and send it or not.
Is fainting dead away from fruit a hobby of his or something?
"Since it isn't a royal command, you're free to decide as you please. But was there nothing else? From what the Count hears, the capital is already debating rewards for the eastern rebellion."
So the war had turned completely after my little assist, had it.
Don't tell me I'm included in that.
"Wouldn't that be the case?"
When you thought about it, fair enough.
Am I allowed to be?
"That part is complicated, so I'm checking through my connections. You most likely won't receive a reward the way other nobles do — as a subject of the crown, that is."
What's that supposed to mean?
Something was nagging at me.
Don't tell me I'm set to play the central role in the royal family's grand design — reducing the Holy Kingdom's influence through religious independence?
That was just a conspiracy theory, wasn't it?
It was a conspiracy theory, right?
The Teacher couldn't bring himself to deny it.
Um, excuse me? That was definitely just a conspiracy theory... wasn't it?