Don't Play Games with Food (1)

Evening, on the third day of the Monster Wave.

"This is starting to wear on me... Do these waves usually drag on this long?"

"This one's been a bit of a struggle, I'll grant you, but they generally wrap up in about a week. It won't be long now."

"I see... Oh, would you care for a few more olives?"

"Don't mind if I do! Much obliged!"

He dug in with gusto. It was nothing but plain bread, not a thing added to it, but a few salty pickled olives on top made it perfectly decent.

Three days shut inside the shelter with nothing to do—if I didn't talk to someone, the boredom was going to finish me. In that respect, the merchant uncle in the next seat made excellent company. A trader gets around, and he had no shortage of interesting stories. Passing him something to eat with his bread bought his goodwill easily enough.

Iseria was so bored she'd picked up a habit she'd never had before: jittering her leg. The wooden platform we shared vibrated in time with it.

For all the merchant's talk of it ending within a week, the guards watching the shelter—and the knights who dropped by now and then—wore anxious faces. I couldn't read the battle itself, but I could feel well enough that things were not going according to plan.

My own face was no calmer. No matter that I'd packed every ingredient into the fridge before we left, anything with a short shelf life was bound to spoil. Damn it. I'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠raised hell making all that tofu, and now I'd have to throw most of it out without even getting to eat it. The seasoned greens were the same story. Even if they didn't spoil outright, leave them sitting too long and they'd weep so much water I'd have to toss them anyway. Once I got home, I was in for one thorough clean-out.

I sighed and looked around. Three days in this place had been enough to get a rough sense of how the shelter ran. It sat not far from the knight order's headquarters and the walls of Silbaerin, and it served as more than a refuge—it doubled as an enormous storehouse. More precisely, in peacetime it was the order's warehouse, and in wartime they turned the broad open ground into a shelter. Supplies went out to headquarters, and whatever ran short came back in. Not that my eyes registered anything but food. Combat gear might as well have been invisible.

"Today's haul is a bit thin."

"This is everything we could scrape out of our village storehouse..."

"No, no. I wasn't trying to pressure you. Spring's only just arrived—it can't be easy. Thank you."

"Aigoo... not at all..."

A rickety cart drawn by two worn-out horses unloaded three sacks each of grain and flour, plus two crates of crops laid by through the winter—potatoes, turnips, and the like. Creaking and groaning, it turned back toward the village. The ration soldier who checked the goods let out a small sigh, and watching him, I felt the same unhappy pinch.

Each sack looked to be about fifty kilograms, the crop crates maybe twenty. The knight order was hardly a corner shop, of course; they'd have more food stockpiled somewhere. But if resupply only trickled in like this, it would all run dry before long. The resources it takes to keep soldiers fed defy an ordinary person's imagination. Even in the modern world, with agriculture, science, and technology as advanced as they are, a defense budget is always short—never in surplus. A medieval society lagging behind on every front went without saying.

Set everything else aside and look only at food. Silbaerin's knights numbered roughly six hundred, and a single meal ate ten sacks of grain. People don't live on grain alone. Add the other crops, the meat, the seasonings, and the ingredients required multiplied. By that measure, the current supply rate was pathetic. What had come in over a whole day wasn't just that one cart, but four at most had come and gone, and the loads were all about the same. I had no idea how much was already sitting in the warehouse, but judging by the ration soldier's face, there wasn't much slack.

I quietly opened Mana Market.

I scrolled farther down the list, hunting for flour and barley.

The moment I selected flour, a question appeared before my eyes.

It wasn't only flour. Barley, rice, salt—anything that didn't come in a neat single piece—tended to bring up that same line. I'd never bought in truly massive quantities, but one purchase of twenty kilograms didn't cost all that much mana. If my total was a hundred, it took about seven. Spend every last drop and I could pull two hundred and eighty kilograms of flour at once. Of course, I'd also collapse from mana exhaustion.

Couldn't I use this to help feed the knight order? If I kept it reasonable—two hundred kilograms of ingredients at a time—it might at least let them breathe. The problem was how to hand the stuff over. The pretext itself was fine. I was a citizen with a city identification token, after all. But if I, a man who owned nothing but a small backpack, strolled up, announced two hundred kilos of flour, on the house, lol, and poofed it into existence? As far as I knew, no magic in this world resembled my status window. They'd either scream sorcery! and drag me off, or drag me off and remake me into a flour sack. Either way, the worst possible ending.

"Hey, Iseria."

"What?"

"You wouldn't happen to know subspace magic, or anything like that?"

"You think a spell like that exists?"

She looked at me as if I'd just said something profoundly stupid. I'd half expected that. If magic that convenient existed, everyone would already be using it.

Ah, forget it.

The worry only deepened, and that night, once I was sure everyone around me was asleep, I carefully got to my feet. My destination was the ingredient warehouse. Not the warehouse, actually—the little shed beside it.

It went without saying that guards rotated watches in front of every storehouse, ingredients included. Even without them, the doors would be locked tight, and breaking in was impossible. So I'd chosen the shed next door. It was old and small, and it didn't really have a door so much as a gaping opening. Junk and straw lay scattered inside. Being so close to the warehouse, any noise risked giving me away. I slipped in on quiet feet.

Without a moment's hesitation I opened the status window and selected flour.

Yes. Ten sacks, twenty kilograms each.

The instant I settled the quantity in my mind, mana rushed out of my body as the price. More than half of it vanished at once, and a light dizziness washed over me. Even so, the transaction went through. In the empty space of the shed, ten twenty-kilogram sacks of flour appeared, stacked neat and tight.

Sneaking in at the dead of night, and what I was doing wasn't theft—it was planting goods. The awkwardness of it sat strangely with me, but the thought of the ration soldier's face when he found them in the morning pulled a smile out of me anyway. I retraced my steps and lay down. Whether from the lighter heart or from spending so much mana so suddenly, sleep crashed over me almost at once.

"Huh? What's flour doing here... It's real? Hey! Go get the supply officer, quick!"

"Yes, sir! Yes, sir!"

Just as planned.

I'd been awake since early morning, and I sat up to the sound of the ration soldiers' surprise. Iseria, up even earlier than I was, watched them too. That girl really did rise at the crack of dawn every single day.

"Good morning, Iseria."

"You're late getting up. Honestly... Huh?"

Instead of her usual grumbling, she studied my face. Our eyes met, and yet hers seemed to look straight through me. It was oddly uncomfortable.

"Jin. Your mana's dropped a little."

"Huh? Wha—has it? I can't really tell..."

Suspicion from a direction I hadn't expected at all. I played dumb on the spot.

"Hmm... You're right, though. Well, it should be fine. It didn't drop that much."

It wasn't serious enough to keep her staring, and she let the look go. Could anyone who used magic sense a thing like that? Surprise aside, it was genuinely fascinating.

"Didn't we already put yesterday's ingredients in the warehouse?"

"Yes, sir. I've no idea where this came from, but... the quality is top grade. Could it be a delivery meant for the lord's castle that was sent here by mistake?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Heh heh... Just move it into the warehouse for now."

"Yes, sir."

Hauling his considerable bulk along, the supply officer checked the flour, gave the ration soldier his orders, and left. That meaningful little laugh left a bad taste—but the soldier's face was far more relaxed than it had been yesterday. Whatever the story, the food supply had been helped, and he was glad of it.

"Jin. Let's go for a walk."

"We went yesterday. It'll be the same anyway."

"Even so! I'm bored!"

The day passed exactly like the ones before it. Stiff bread, a bit of chatter, then a walk with Iseria as far as the plaza. So long as we didn't go beyond the walls, stepping out of the shelter and coming back was allowed. Even in an emergency, people still had to live. There was, of course, nothing to see. Had the Monster Wave broken out on schedule, adventurers and peddlers chasing a profit might have packed the streets—but it had erupted too early, and no one from outside had been able to come. The bleak walk ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ended, and night arrived.

Around the same hour as the night before, I got up again and padded toward the shed, light as a cat. They must have moved every sack; the space where the flour had been was empty.

Yes.

I traded for another ten sacks of twenty-kilogram flour, just the same. They settled gently into the empty space. A swell of satisfaction rose in my chest, and I turned to leave the shed.

A rustle—footsteps, from outside. I froze.

Uh... what do I do?

Getting caught like this would look suspicious enough on its own, and it wasn't going to end cleanly no matter how I spun it. I scanned the shed in a hurry and spotted a shabby partition toward the back. The gaps in it were wide in places, but if I hid well, I shouldn't be visible from outside. As the footsteps drew closer, I ducked behind the wall.

And who should appear but the fat supply officer I'd seen that morning, with two soldiers who looked like his men.

"I came just in case, and it's really here. Using goods this fine on rations—doesn't that strike you as a waste?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right. Let's move it quietly."

They traded that loaded little conversation, then loaded the sacks onto a cart they'd brought. Once all ten were aboard, the sturdier of the soldiers hauled the cart off into the dark. Only after the heavy rumble had faded out of hearing did I leave the shed and try to sort my tangled thoughts.

From the circumstances, the supply officer and his crew were about to skim the flour I'd prepared. But circumstances were only circumstances. Without clear evidence I couldn't denounce them as embezzlers, and even with evidence, it was anyone's guess whether anyone would actually credit the word of a black-haired nobody with nothing to his name.

Haa... I'm a hundred percent sure, though.

Back in bed without being caught, I kept turning it over. And then a method came to me.

Not enough credibility?

Then I just raise my credit score.

The clever move in hand, I dragged Iseria out of the shelter the moment morning broke. Hauled into the dawn air with no idea why, she was irritation incarnate. I ducked into a deserted alley, checked the surroundings for a long while, and only then spoke.

"Iseria. Help me out. Just this once."

"What? You drag me out here out of nowhere and—!"

No time for questions. I summoned two hundred kilograms of flour right in front of her.

"Wh—what is this?! Magic?!"

"Too long to explain right now. Just carry this and follow me."

"What?"

My tone left no room for argument. Iseria looked dumbfounded, but she obediently called up her wind magic. Two hundred kilograms of flour rose and bobbed on the breeze as if it weighed less than twenty grams. I walked beside her, head high, having tidied myself until I looked as respectable as I could manage.

The guard at the shelter gate was a face I saw every day, but sensing my completely transformed presence, he flinched and cleared the way. It might have been the flour floating beside me that made him flinch, not my presence. I didn't stop there. I strode on, even more upright, and everyone in the shelter stared, eyes wide, at me and Iseria.

At last we reached the supply warehouse. A ration soldier who'd come to inspect the stores met my eyes and snapped to attention in surprise. He seemed to recognize me a moment later, and his posture loosened—but my mouth was already open.

"E-excuse me?"

The way to raise the credit of a black-haired man who owned next to nothing. It was, quite simply, to lie through my teeth and call myself a merchant.