By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 6 - Chapter 12

Chapter 4 Episode 12: Procuring Food

It was the second day of training at the Poison Bug Plains. We took turns instructing the students, so we had free time until our turn came around. I had already secured shelter, so the next step was to acquire food and water. To collect them, I carried a leather bag and gloves with me.

“See you later,” I told Roche before I left.

“Careful out there.”

I walked a short way to some nearby woods. I guessed that it was in order to teach the students about the importance of doing research before a mission, but prior knowledge had a significant effect on the difficulty of camping in this territory. The pamphlet I had bought had everything from general tips on what to watch out for to the locations of rivers and edible plants. Anyone who memorized the contents of that pamphlet could most likely survive out here whether they were used to camping or not.

I walked along the road until I got the feeling that I was being watched. I looked around until I found a student. They didn’t seem to need anything from me; it was more that I just happened to enter their field of vision. When I looked at the student, he nodded to me once, then began to march across the plains. Maybe he had a job to do, or maybe he was searching for food like I was. I didn’t know for sure, but I did come across a few students heading off to the plains like this. I just prayed that they wouldn’t hurt themselves.

I got to the woods and quickly found some red parasol mushrooms, an edible fungus whose appearance matched their name. Despite the bright red color, they weren’t poisonous. They had a fragrant scent and a savory flavor. Finding those so soon seemed like a good omen. Behind the tree next to these, there grew some enoku mushrooms. Beneath them, a thorny fungus called a spear cluster was jutting from the ground. Both were edible. If I made a stew using these, it would almost certainly be delectable.

Autumn had arrived in this country, and that seemed to be mushroom season here, just how it was in the Forest of Gana. There was always an increase in fungus there around autumn, so I got to enjoy a variety of mushrooms every year. I wanted to pick a decent number of them to have a feast with. I could just prioritize using the ones that would spoil quickly, and if any were left over, I could dry them and take them back home with me. Then I could ask Chelma to cook something with them for lunch at the laundromat.

This country didn’t have the technology for artificially cultivating mushrooms yet, so when people wanted them, they either went out and picked them in the wild or bought ones picked by others; this meant that the harvestable amount was entirely dependent on timing. The weather and season controlled the availability of mushrooms, even for wild animals searching for food. Much like how dried shiitake mushrooms were a luxury product in Japan up until about the Edo period, mushrooms were fairly expensive in this country. Getting to find a wide variety on your own and eat them fresh was a privilege enjoyed solely by hunters or adventurers. Not only were they good to eat on their own, but they could be used for soup stock. If only they could be easily purchased all year round...

Actually, I could try growing some myself. There are two cultivation methods for mushrooms; the outdoor log technique, and the indoor tray technique. The former involves growing the fungus on wood in natural conditions. The latter grows them from a mix of sawdust and nutrients or the like, from what I could recall. I didn’t know the necessary temperature, or moisture, or anything else, but I knew the general methodology. It would be worth a try.

Even if I didn’t know the exact details, simply knowing the basic idea could have made it highly possible. But I’d heard stories of people who blew all their money trying to cultivate mushrooms for profit and failing, so I needed to be cautious. I could just try it for fun and consider myself lucky if I got it right. Not right now, though. Finding food was the top priority.

“Anything here?”

“What about over there?”

“Nothing. How about there?”

“Can’t find a thing.”

I heard children’s voices through the trees. It sounded like they were looking for something. Curious, I sneaked toward them and found that they were the four boys who argued with Beck’s party on the first day.

“Guess we should’ve gone to the plains.”

“Rock lizards camouflage themselves as rocks, y’know. There’s nothing but trees and grass around here—I don’t see any rocks.”

Rock lizards weren’t even listed in the pamphlet I bought. That meant these boys had picked a job that was impossible to complete; a trap set for students who didn’t do their research. There wouldn’t be a penalty for it, but it would be pointed out as a mistake that the guildmaster intended for them to learn from.

In any case, I decided to get away from them. If they happened to notice me and ask for my opinion, that would be annoying. I hid behind the trees and slipped away.

■ ■ ■

Around an hour passed.

“I’m back!”

“Welcome!”

“Welcome back.”

When I left my things at my base and announced my return, the teachers waiting on standby greeted me.

“There was a ton to eat in those woods. It’s pretty easy to find food out there.”

“Neat. Maybe we won’t have kids whining about running out of food this time, then.”

“How often does that happen, Lucy?”

“There tend to be a lot of kids who are new to things like this. Sometimes they don’t bring enough food, and sometimes their food ends up spoiling for one reason or another. As long as we’re in a region where food is available, we can just teach them how to find it. It should be fine.”

“That makes sense. How have the students been doing, by the way? I saw some of them in the woods.”

“They’re all doing pretty much the same thing.”

“They’re off in the woods or the plains doing their job or looking for food. We basically have nothing to do but look after the horses.”

“Makes for an easy job, but it gets boring. Haha.”

All of the students were away, apparently. At least they were enthusiastic.

“Also, while I was in the woods, I thought of something.”

“What?”

“There seem to be a lot of mushrooms there. Some are edible, but there are a lot of poisonous ones too, and it could be hard to tell which is which.”

It was common sense not to put weird mushrooms in your mouth, and the students were warned, but it was possible that some could accidentally eat poisonous ones, thinking they were food.

“Sounds like we should keep an eye on what they find.”

“Yes, I think that would be for the best. I brought a lot of medicine along, so if you ever need any, just tell me. Depending on the type of poison, I could also create an antidote from materials in the woods.”

“Got it, I’ll tell you if anything happens.”

“See you later, then.”

I needed to tend to the food and water I gathered. I started with the water. There was a river in the woods just as the pamphlet said, so it wasn’t difficult to find, but the quality of that water was a problem. It wasn’t especially clean, so I wanted to filter it.

Outside my fumigated shelter, I gathered some dirt. I used earth magic on it to produce sand, gravel, and a tank that looked like a cylinder on top of a big funnel. Next, I carried them to my shelter, then took some cloth and crushed charcoal out of my Item Box. I laid the cloth out inside the tank, then added a layer of charcoal, another cloth, a layer of sand, another cloth, a layer of gravel, and yet another cloth. I could pour water through here to filter out the filth.

Lastly, I left the tank in a corner of the room on top of a cloth to soak up any water that leaked out. My makeshift water purifier was complete. I had a big jug that I could use to scoop up the river water. Now, if I just filtered and boiled it as necessary, I could get safe drinking water. I tested it out by pouring some water into the tank.

As the water was being filtered, I used the leftover gravel and cloth to do another job. I molded the gravel with magic to make a big, flat, shallow planter, then filled it with scavenger slime compost. I turned some leftover gravel back into dirt and mixed it with the compost, finishing the preparations in no time.

I took out some sesame seed-sized beans that I’d collected in the woods and scattered them around in the planter, made clean water with water magic to moisturize it all, and covered it with a cloth to protect it from light. Next, I used wood magic to force the beans to sprout. They rapidly grew, the white of the sprouts rising in the darkness. When I removed the cloth, the sunlight from the window illuminated the thin, white surface of the bean sprouts. I harvested what I needed for tonight, then left the rest to grow further.

These plants grew as fast as weeds, so by using a combination of fertilizer and magic, I could immediately produce more beans. And by harvesting those beans, I’d be able to keep producing bean sprouts for days to come. I got a lot of use out of this food back in the Forest of Gana, so this brought back some memories.

Speaking of nostalgic food, I also found some grainspear grass, a plant resembling zebra grass that grew near river shores. Once fully grown, they were long and sharp with many small seeds attached to their tips. Depending on what perspective you viewed them from, the stalks could look like spears. They were classified as grains much like rice and wheat, and when made into a powder, they could be baked into something like unfermented bread. But while it was edible, it didn’t taste good, so the general public viewed the plant as a worthless weed. Just about nobody ate grainspear grass as part of their regular diet. Outside of wildlife survival situations, most would probably just eat bread made from wheat.

In any case, I had various mushrooms, bean sprouts, and grainspear grass. I picked an assortment of other plants as well, including some that could be preserved or used as seasoning. It looked like I would be safe tonight when it came to food.