Crisis Is Opportunity
Fungusby.
"Then take care not to get yourselves hurt."
"Don't you worry, Chief. All right! Adventurers—we're counting on you!"
Escorted by the adventurers, the men of the village and the hired hands set out for the forest with axes in hand. The Fungusby chief saw them off.
The sudden calamity that had struck Fungusby had been dealt with. But as always, cleaning up after a problem took far more time and labor than solving it in the first place. Catherine, on her way back to Coldon, had promised support for restoring the village to its former state—yet the chief still had no idea where to begin.
Casualties and property damage were not the real issue. A handful of adventurers and militia members had been injured defending the village. Adventurers getting hurt was simply part of the job, and aside from the militia, not a single ordinary villager had been harmed except those who had followed the subjugation force. Truly, the gods had watched over Fungusby. The chief let out a long, heavy sigh.
Repairing the broken wooden palisade and rebuilding the dismantled structures would cost timber and manpower, but in Iceland trees had always been in endless supply. Even if the growth rate of the forests near Fungusby fell short of the regional average, everything would regenerate within a few years. On top of that, Catherine—whom the village now served—had put her various promises of support down in writing. To let this chance slip away would mean he was unfit to be chief.
Repairing and expanding the aging well. Completely replacing every log that made up the palisade. Introducing the latest construction methods. All the work they had kept putting off could be finished in one stroke. Every one of those projects would devour an enormous sum of money. Even with outside support, if Fungusby had not already been a wealthy village sitting on substantial savings, the idea of doing it all at once would have been pure fantasy.
Yet as the chief watched carriages, carts, laborers, and adventurers continue to come and go—not quite on the scale of a city, but steadily—his face remained clouded with worry. The others gathered in his house wore the same expression. The reason was simple.
We'll have to find a new source of income. That forest is no longer a gold mine that spits out Akusare mushrooms. It's a monster nest.
Evening had fallen. The people summoned by the chief sat in heavy thought.
"One thing's certain—until now the village has been throwing money straight into the forest. The golems were leaking oil too. Can't we sell that somehow?"
"I heard the oil from Akusare mushroom golems has zero commercial value as a magical material."
"Just thinking about how much of that stuff we used to dump makes my stomach twist."
"They say those golem cores fetch a high price. What if we got into the brokerage business?"
"As a main village enterprise that might draw too much heat from the big players in the cities."
"Then maybe we should focus on catering to the adventurers."
"Inns? Food stalls? What exactly are you suggesting?"
"What about growing Red Witch's Finger in bulk?"
"Oh—right, I heard that's all the rage in Coldon these days."
Opinions flew back and forth until the chief's daughter, seated quietly at his side, spoke a single line.
"Whatever we pick, though, nothing's going to make money like the Akusare mushrooms did."
Silence dropped over the living room that had been as noisy as a marketplace. She wasn't wrong. Noble extravagance was never simply about luxury. It was a quiet declaration that oneself, one's house, and one's domain were thriving—a porcupine-like defense that warned others there was nothing to gain by picking a fight. Expensive clothes, exquisite cuisine, furniture plated in gold and silver: among nobles who spent their days probing one another, these were swords and spears. Thanks to that, Fungusby had never known a lean year since it began harvesting and selling Akusare mushrooms. Compared with inns, eateries, or ordinary farming, it was an insult even to place them in the same conversation—a pure goldmine of a business.
But that era had ended this spring. The savings accumulated through the paranoiac thrift of elders who still remembered the great famine decades ago gave them time, yet idling was never a virtue. They had been trading ideas, and now she had thrown cold water on the mood.
"So you've got a brilliant plan of your own, then? You've just been sitting there with your mouth shut."
The sarcasm was only natural.
"Yes! Of course I do!"
Contrary to every expectation, Isette—the chief's daughter—answered with absolute confidence. The villager who had mocked her recoiled in surprise.
"H-huh? Where do you get that kind of swagger?"
"Because I can show you the solution right this second!"
The moment the words left her mouth she sprang up and dashed into the kitchen. Moments later everyone found themselves staring at a great pot brimming with golden oil.
"What—Akusare mushroom oil? Wasn't that stuff poisonous?"
"I thought she had something real to say. You want us to start dealing in toxins?"
Decades of dumping the oil into the forest as worthless refuse did not vanish overnight. The younger villagers scowled. Their reaction was only natural.
"The mage said it isn't poison."
"Lord Atanitas's attendant—no, the chef—even made us snacks with it!"
"It was as rich and nutty as chewing a whole handful of nuts."
But there were people in the room who had seen it with their own eyes and tasted it themselves: the children and elders who had taken temporary shelter in the temple. When the village elders—true pillars of the community—spoke up in defense, even those who had been sneering at Isette had no choice but to reconsider. And above all else—
Bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble-bubble—
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle—
Meat and vegetables of every kind, clad in golden batter, frothed furiously as they fried in the radiant oil. Even the people of Fungusby, who had never been stingy with cooking oil, had never witnessed such extravagance. While they stood dazed, Isette fished the pieces out one by one and set them before the assembled company. The reaction was instantaneous.
"Never in my young days did I dream I'd get to enjoy a luxury like this."
"One's too small. I've got to try just one more!"
"I never knew vegetables could taste this good!"
Crisp crunching filled the air, accompanied by nothing but praise. Buoyed by the success, Isette looked around the living room.
"I think we should go into the oil trade!"
"...!"
"One leather pouch fills an entire pot! Now think about the size of those mushroom golems—how much oil do you suppose we'll get?"
Akusare mushrooms averaged the size of a grown man's fist. Akusare mushroom golems, even the smallest of them, were larger than a grown man. The living room ignited in an instant.
"If we just extract the oil from those massive things...!"
"Hold on—leather sacks won't cut it. We'll need barrels. No—better to hire a whole barrel-maker."
"They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but even as a girl the chief's child is cut from different cloth!"
"All right, all right—just give me one more of those fritters, would you?"
Even the handful who had mocked Isette had no choice but to concede. In Iceland, oil of any kind was always in short supply, and edible oil was rarer still. More than that, Isette herself was certain. The Akusare mushroom oil still gleamed with its clear, brilliant golden light. Days had passed and it had been used several times, yet the rich, nutty aroma had not faded in the slightest.
"So, Isette."
Chewing a fritter slowly while examining both the food and the oil, the Fungusby chief turned his gaze on his only child.
"Have you tested the oil from the mushroom golems?"
"...Ah!"
"Right. We'd better start there."
Akusare mushrooms and Akusare mushroom golems. Catherine had already declared that the golem oil, like ordinary Akusare oil, held virtually no value as a magical material. Obtaining the remains of mushroom golems was not difficult; just beyond the palisade lay heaps of debris that had yet to be cleared away.
At the chief's order the villagers made ready in moments. Salt was sprinkled over the golem remnants in a pot, and every eye fixed upon it.
"Hmm. The color looks a good deal paler."
"The smell's weaker too, isn't it?"
"Taste feels a bit thinner as well."
"Let's compare them side by side."
When the pot of genuine Akusare oil was set next to it, the difference became stark. Akusare mushroom oil possessed a mystical hue as though pure gold had been melted and clarified, and its deep nutty fragrance filled the entire room. The golem oil, by contrast, was a transparent yellow, its scent almost faint. The one saving grace, exactly as everyone had hoped, was the sheer volume: the golems yielded vastly more oil than the mushrooms ever had.
"The quality gap is obvious."
"No—on the contrary, this is more than enough. It's excellent."
The chief stroked his chin, contradicting his crestfallen daughter.
"Even if the quality has dropped, it still far surpasses something as common as beef tallow or lard."
"Father? Then—"
"Yes. The only real problem will be the city guilds."
The guilds. The entrenched powers that dominated every market in the cities—meat, bread, vegetables, distribution, timber, carpenters, blacksmiths. Their presence was impossible to ignore; a collective murmur of unease ran through the room.
"That said... there is no oil guild in Coldon."
"Pardon? No oil guild, Elder?"
"Oil is the one thing Coldon does not produce. When I visited last year, among all those countless guilds there wasn't a single oil guild."
At the elder's words, the light in Isette's eyes changed.
"Hmm. Startup costs are the worry—"
"The village still has more than enough money stockpiled. And if we offer oil as part of the daily wage, won't people flock here in droves?"
"Hah."
In Iceland the one thing always in shortest supply was calories. People would pour in from every corner of Iceland—perhaps even from other countries.
"Lord Atanitas declared the forest a dungeon that endlessly spits out golems. Flip that around."
"It means the whole place is a mass of oil. What about transport, though?"
"For that we'll have to use Coldon's transport guild and the adventurers' guild. The distance is only half a day, after all. Anyone know someone in the transport guild?"
"Don't worry—the vice-guildmaster there is a friend of mine. I'm more concerned about pressure from the other guilds."
"Think how much Akusare mushroom we delivered to them over the years. If they have any shame at all, Coldon's power brokers and nobles will watch our backs."
"And above all, the person we now serve is His Grace the Duke's chief magical advisor, is she not?"
"Then—"
The village elders. Men who had survived famine in their youth, accumulated every kind of experience while the village expanded its businesses, and now in old age helped the chief run the place—a living repository of hard-won knowledge. While the younger folk could only roll their eyes in amazement—
"Father. Let's take this oil business for ourselves."
Isette turned to the Fungusby chief, eyes blazing with passion.
"Chief. Whether we merely want the village to survive or hope to expand it greatly, there is no better venture than this."
"When else will we put the connections our village has built for generations to such perfect use?"
First the chief's daughter, Isette, who had led the charge. Then the elders. Then the villagers they had persuaded.
"...Distance to the city, connections, capital, land, and the state of the village itself."
After a long, silent consideration, the Fungusby chief broke into a broad grin.
"All right, Isette. Just as you said—this business is ours."
In an instant the chief's house boiled over with excitement.