Chapter Eleven: Bread Trees and Bread Troubles
It was the next morning.
“Oh boy! I’ve never seen anything like it!” I was in the middle of my morning routine, feeding the village monsters and getting a little workout in, when I heard Keel’s voice ringing out close to the lab. Fohl was standing a short distance from the gaggle of people, pointing at Keel with a troubled expression on his face. He wanted me to go and check it out.
“What’s up, Keel?” I said as I approached the hubbub. Keel and others from the village were all getting excited about something with Holn. Rat was part of the throng, too, but had a less-than-pleased look on her face. The villagers really seemed excited about something. I already knew why Fohl was keeping his distance—he didn’t like Holn. That only made me lump him in with the filolials though. It was like the natural instinct of a wild animal to keep away from a perceived threat.
“Ah, future Shield Hero. You should take a look at this too. Just a first attempt from little old me,” Holn said, pointing at a tree I’d never seen before. I did a double take—it looked like a bioplant, but it was growing something different. Normally, they grew red tomato-like fruit or berries, but this one was growing what looked like bread.
“Bubba, Bubba, check it out! Isn’t that amazing?” Keel yapped. She picked one of the bread berries and carried it over to me. I checked it over to make sure it wasn’t poisonous or dangerous in any other way. The poison check came back clear. I split it into two . . . Yep, this looked like normal bread. I gave it a nibble, and it tasted fine too. Bread was the perfect description, apart from where it had come from.
It also had some seeds inside it. They were kind of soft, and looked edible too, but I decided to take them out and keep them. Keel had carried a bread roll over to me, but there were also what looked like baguettes growing on the tree.
“What is this, a bread tree?” I asked. We weren’t living in a fairy tale here. Holn gave a laugh that was bordering on sounding like a mad scientist.
“The amount of control over these plants is quite something. So easy to use too. I was just experimenting with this, but even I’m surprised at how well this has turned out,” Holn said. I was the one being surprised here. I’d had no idea the bioplants could be used for this kind of thing! It looked like genetically modified food gone too far, to be honest, like eating it might turn your fingers into hot dog buns, even if it was free from poison.
“Hey, hey, Holn! Do you think you could make a crepe tree?” Keel suggested.
“I’m not sure what a crepe even is, for one thing,” Holn replied. Keel quickly turned to me.
“Bubba, Bubba! Make some crepes for Holn!” she said.
“From the perspective of intellectual curiosity, I would very much like to learn this recipe from you, future Shield Hero,” she said.
“Mamoru knows about crepes, surely,” I said.
“He might know about them, but that doesn’t mean he can make them,” Holn said.
“Archduke, I’m not sure we should be doing things like this,” Rat said hesitantly. She had a point. We could return to the future to find bread trees had taken over. This was all very dangerous, so I wanted to keep a tight lid on its operation. Taking all of that into account, I thought if she could make plants like this so easily, it was really going to ease up the food problems in the village. I wondered how best to proceed.
“Hey, Bubba! I want some crepes!” Keel continued over and over about eating some of my crepes.
“Crepes in the morning?” I asked her. Keel liked sweet ones, which were more like a dessert than a meal. The menu I had planned for today was along a totally different trajectory, so changing things to make crepes now would be a real pain. I could probably make some other confectionery, but it seemed like a bad idea to run down our resources. Things like flour could be very limited for the foreseeable future—we would need to find somewhere to get them from in Siltran. They might not even have such things.
If that was the case, we could always have Holn modify more bioplants and boost our food supplies.
“I guess I can make some,” I conceded, “but you’ll need to work hard to earn them!”
“You bet! I’m going to bring in pots of gold. You’ll see!” Keel replied.
“I’m sure you will,” I said, and I meant it. Keel actually was one of the better merchants in the village. It had been a while since I’d done any serious merchant work. We’d made some cash during the festival Melty had held. That was based on Filo’s pop-star popularity. But when talking about ongoing gains, Keel was probably doing better than me. We also need information right now, so giving Keel and the others a boost might actually be most effective. “Just don’t share too many details about us or what we are doing here. We still don’t know what could happen,” I warned her.
“I’m with you there, Bubba!” she replied. I wondered if she really was with me. I looked over at Imiya at her side. The two of them were good friends, so I hoped Imiya would be able to keep Keel under control a bit. She noticed me looking and gave a slightly embarrassed nod. She guessed what I was asking. Sometimes Imiya really reminded me of Raphtalia back from when I first met her.
“You can worry about making accessories later. For now, do some trading with Keel,” I told her.
“Ah, okay. I’m not sure what will sell yet, so I’ll do some investigation,” Imiya said.
“Crepes! Crepes!” Keel yipped, in full-on dog mode.
“Raph!” The Raph species watched her with happy looks on their faces. The sight was almost soothing.
“If you let little old me get serious about something, these are the results,” Holn bragged. “Future Shield Hero. I’m pretty sure you could use these plants to make far more than just this temporary housing, like a castle, for example,” Holn said.
“That would be quite something, but what about the foundations and stuff like that?” I asked.
“Yep, that’s a good point. If you built a whole castle, nothing else would be able to grow in the vicinity either,” she responded. She had already shown she had a habit of just throwing dangerous ideas out there. I could see where Rat got it from—in fact, in a side-by-side comparison, Rat looked like the sane one.
“What’s all this morning noise?” Melty said with a sleepy look still on her face. Raphtalia had still been pretty worried about everything last night and had taken a long time to get to sleep, so she was still sleeping now. If this hubbub grew any louder, it would surely bring her out too.
To explain to Melty, I just pointed at the bread tree. She frowned, shaking her head.
“That’s a pretty intense piece of botany,” she commented.
“Sure is. Raphtalia is going to flip when she wakes up,” I said.
“I can imagine,” Melty agreed.
“Don’t you have these in the future?” Holn confirmed with us.
“Well . . . during the winter, I guess there is the chocolate,” Melty said.
“Huh? Chocolate?” I wondered if she meant cocoa beans. “It grows on trees?”
“Yes. Thanks to an event called Valentine’s Day that a hero from the past spread,” Melty explained. I never expected to hear that here—and we had bigger things to worry about with the waves anyway. “A certain region has trees that grow chocolate. When chocolate season comes, it gets sent out from there around the world.”
“Wow, okay,” I said. A tree that grew chocolate like fruit. I wondered if that was the end point of this kind of tree, as I looked at the bread tree again. It sounded like something I’d heard . . . somewhere before. Maybe there was an “evil researcher” behind the chocolate trees too.
“I’ve heard the chocolate farmers have it real hard during harvest season,” Melty said. Chocolate farmers! What a job to actually exist. Still, if chocolate-growing trees existed, I guessed someone would have to farm them. It was still a surprise to hear that such a fantastical thing existed. It was like winning a golden ticket. Nice to hear about something hopeful, full of dreams, for once.
Of course, it might have been created by one of the resurrected, but I hoped it been left behind for us by an actual official hero. If it had been created without the use of bioplants, then that was quite something too.
“That all sounds quite interesting,” Holn commented. “The issue there being that we don’t have one here I can actually see.” I certainly didn’t have any chocolate, and I also couldn’t make any without the right ingredients. “It might be worth conducting some ongoing research into this.”
“If you’re going to waste your time researching chocolate, please concentrate on getting us back to the future,” I told her. I knew she was good, so I really wanted to keep her focused on finding clues for getting us home.
“I understand,” she said, but I wondered if she did. In any case, I added crepes to what I was going to make for breakfast.
“Excuse me, Mr. Naofumi? I’ve heard that we have some strange bioplants in the village?” Raphtalia said. She had heard about the bakery trees and immediately came to ask me about it.
“That’s the short of it, but I have nothing to do with it,” I told her.
“So it’s Holn’s work,” Raphtalia guessed.
“That’s right. She works surprisingly fast,” I said.
“And do you think it’s safe to leave her unchecked?” Raphtalia asked.
“I understand why you’re feeling anxious, but I can’t see the harm in it for now,” I said.
“It just feels like things are moving away from the village. I know . . .” Raphtalia said, a little sadly. I had always done my best to keep her home safe and secure . . . until maybe around the time I allowed for all those Raph species to be created. “It started around the time you planted all the sakura lumina, for their convenient effects. I was really trying not to let it bother me.” This was a dangerous sign. Raphtalia’s fundamental awareness was being shaken. I needed her to remain as my stopper, keeping me in check as required. I had to believe she would still do that!
Having finished breakfast, we started planning what to do next.
“Before we start our trading, let’s drop in on Mamoru first,” I suggested. We were going to start by focusing on selling things inside Siltran and gathering more information. But first I wanted to check Mamoru’s stance on this and get his permission to start conducting business. It might inject some new life into the nation, but an influx of new products might also be a cause for concern. Better to have a discussion with him about it first. “We should introduce everyone from the village to him too.” I told Raphtalia how Mamoru was taking care of war orphans in the castle. Those kids might make good friends for Keel and the others like her in our village. They all looked pretty happy, but they had to have their concerns. By spending time with people from this world, Keel and the others would get a feel for how things were done here. I wanted to avoid them growing up thinking they could do whatever they liked just because they were underlings of a hero. “So we’re headed to Siltran castle! Everyone stick close to me,” I told them.
“Okay!” Keel and the others shouted. We used a portal and arrived at the Siltran castle town. I had asked Ren and Fohl to register this location ahead of time, affording us the leeway to transport everyone.
“Oh boy! This is the country of Siltran?” Keel enthused, looking around happily as we walked toward the castle. “It looks pretty basic though, don’t you think? Like a country out in the sticks beyond Melromarc,” she commented. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut sometimes! Imiya had her ears pricked up and was listening to the Siltran people talking around us.
“They don’t speak the same language as Melromarc,” she commented. That reminded me that many people in the village couldn’t speak the languages of other nations.
“We can work around that, surely!” Keel said confidently, thumping her chest. But I was pretty sure things weren’t that simple.
“They do have an archaic lilt to their pronunciation,” Ruft commented to Melty and me. Being from Q’ten Lo, Ruft shared his language with Siltvelt.
What this meant, of course, was that we were going to need a bilingual villager to come along whenever business was being conducted. I had seen this coming, but it still sounded like a lot of hard work.
“Can you understand the Siltran language, Keel?” I asked her.
“Nope, not a word,” she replied smartly. That was no good then. She could be the cutest puppy in the litter and we couldn’t use her like that. “I can follow the language in the nations around Melromarc. That’s about it.”
“They do speak different languages, depending on the region,” Imiya said.
“The filolials translate for me, and I’ve picked up some words here and there. I’m sure it will be fine!” Keel said brightly.
“Some of the other village kids can speak other languages, so I’m sure we’ll be able to conduct business,” Imiya continued, explaining Keel’s overly optimistic take on everything.
“Well, if you say so,” I replied. Kids grew up fast, that was true. But I hoped they knew what they were doing. I had to admit I was a little concerned.
We chatted as we continued toward the castle itself. After asking someone where Mamoru was to be found, we arrived in the castle refectory.
“Hey, Naofumi. You’re here early. I was just getting some breakfast for myself. Would you like to join me?” Mamoru offered.
“No thanks. We ate before leaving the village,” I said. I’d picked a bunch of early risers for my villagers, that was for sure. Mamoru, on the other hand, seemed to take his time with breakfast.
“Okay. What can I help you with so early in the day?” he asked.
“We were thinking of doing some trading in order to gather information and make some money, but I thought we’d better get your permission first,” I told him.
“I see. We’ve been having some distribution difficulties ourselves, so it would be a big help for us too. There are lots of bandits out there who have quietly crossed our borders to plunder us, so you might have to deal with them,” Mamoru commented. A small nation being attacked by a larger one was nothing new.
“No problem. If some trouble comes up, you can handle yourselves, right?” I asked my would-be traders.
“You bet!” said Keel, speaking for everyone. They had seen plenty of level gains, so they could fight. I would vouch for that. They had been through the Phoenix battle and taken on Takt’s forces, so they also had some big-battle experience too. It would take more than some random monsters or bandits to take them down.
“I’ve seen a lot of demi-human therianthropes among your people, Naofumi, but not so many of the stronger races,” Mamoru said. I thought back over those from the village. The ones who could be considered strong races were likely just Fohl, Sadeena, and Shildina. With the absence of the killer whale sisters, that really only left us with Fohl. Raphtalia was from the bloodline of Q’ten Lo, so she was like a raccoon race, but she was actually something else. Same thing for Ruft.
“I guess you’re right. At a glance, we don’t really have any strong-looking ones,” I agreed. For therianthropes, I’d purchased a lot of the mole-type called lumo, due to them being skilled with their hands. Then the others were just whatever. Imiya and her uncle were representative of them. But her uncle was hardly around, meaning Imiya really held that title.
“They should blend in quickly here then,” Mamoru said. From what I had seen of the Siltran people, they didn’t seem especially combat-oriented either. From that perspective, they should be easy to trade with too—less aggression to deal with. “You also have those filolials and the Raph species though. Those are rare and will definitely stand out. You might want to give that side of things some thought,” Mamoru advised. From what we had learned so far, filolials hadn’t appeared in this world yet. Unless I was planning on making a name for myself by completely changing history, it was probably best that we didn’t let them stand out too much.
“The Raph species are good at concealment, so I’ll have them use that to avoid being noticed,” I said. The monsters that had chosen the Raph species route had strength enough to pull a wagon while also being able to use illusion magic to conceal themselves completely. They could turn into a horse or something to hide in plain sight while getting around. If they did get into any trouble, they could work with the filolials to fight it off.
“You have some pretty talented monsters in the future.” Mamoru chuckled.
“I guess we do,” I said, not sure how to take that comment. Another approach would be to pretend they were monsters who had come from afar to serve under Mamoru. I’d have to tread a little more carefully around that idea, so I decided to approach Mamoru with it later.
“It’s that guy from yesterday again! Have you finished talking?” It was the kids who Mamoru took care of. They looked very interested in Keel and the others.
“Bubba, Bubba, who are these kids?” Keel asked me, interested in them.
“They’re under the care of Mamoru,” I explained.
“Oh wow! Really?” Keel exclaimed.
“That’s right,” Mamoru confirmed. “They might not be able to understand you, but I hope you can all be friends.” Hearing that, Keel looked back at me. I felt the same way. We were going to be here for a while, from the look of it.
“Sounds good to me!” Keel said, then turned to the kids. “My name is Keel! Nice to meet you!” She struck (what she thought was) a cool pose, then turned into full puppy mode to finish off her greeting.
“Wow! She’s so cute!” said one child.
“A puppy! A puppy!” exclaimed another. Keel yapped again, frolicking around to communicate with the kids via body language. Her innocent, completely unguarded movements soon broke down the kids’ initial hesitation, and they quickly turned smiles on Keel.
She was still rolling around, begging to be stroked and tickled, licking at the hands and faces of the kids who obliged her. She was a dog, a perfect little puppy. Even her attire looked cute when she was a puppy. All of this, this outpouring of cuteness, was probably why she was such a good merchant.
“I’m going to use the techniques Keel and the Raph species imparted to me to get to know these kids too!” Ruft said. He had been quiet up until that point, but now he adopted an expression I had seen him use a lot recently. It was very much like the one used by the Raph species, which I could only really describe as “cunning.” He moved over to the kids to talk with them.
“My name is Ruftmila, and this is Keel. I hope we can be friends!” Ruft must have used a language that was spoken in Siltran, because the kids were nodding at his introduction.
“Oh, so fluffy!” one of the kids said, stroking Keel.
“She’s so cute!” said another.
“Well? I’m cool, aren’t I!” Keel responded happily, seemingly missing that she was being called cute. Some things were still getting lost in translation, but no matter.
“I hope I can be friends with you too,” Imiya said, following Keel’s example and moving over to talk with them. She was a little stiff in her approach, but she was doing a good job of blending into the group.
“It’s a lovely sight to see,” Raphtalia commented with a smile as she watched them. Meh, whatever. “One thing though, Keel. I don’t think they are calling you cool, not exactly . . .” she said.
“No need to point that out. That’s kind of the secret to Keel’s popularity,” I said. Her being a little silly was part of her charm. One day airheads might rule the world.
“Kids, listen up!” R’yne appeared and clapped her hands to get their attention. “It is breakfast time. You can play with the kids from Naofumi’s village later.” All the kids chorused their agreement, nodded as one, said goodbye to Keel and the others, and then sat down.
“Food?” Keel said, already sniffing around. She was trying to use her new friends to get fed already. I thought for a moment of a bunch of elementary school kids finding a lost puppy and deciding to raise it in secret.
“Keel, you already ate with us,” I reminded her.
“Oh, please! Bubba!” she said. I didn’t say anything else. I just prompted her to take another look at the kids. “Okay, Bubba!” she said, realizing what I was telling her. “This is food you guys have to eat!” she said to the kids. They didn’t look especially healthy, to be honest. When I combined this with what we’d seen in the town, the overall food situation didn’t seem very good here. What with the damage from the waves too, there probably wasn’t enough to go around. We certainly shouldn’t be taking food out of their mouths.
“She’s not going to eat it. Don’t worry,” Mamoru told them.
“That’s right. She’s saying they are for you to eat. If you want to feed her, I’ll make some dog food you can give her later, okay?” I added.
“Really?” one of them asked. All of their eyes were shining. I thought maybe I was spoiling them a little, but this seemed like another good way to build a friendly relationship with Mamoru.
“Promise!” said another.
“Sure. You play nice with them, Keel,” I told her.
“You bet!” she said. I liked the energy, that was for sure.
“Mr. Naofumi, did you notice? You just called food for Keel dog food, didn’t you?” Raphtalia said to me. It was Keel we were talking about, so such a slip of the tongue couldn’t be helped.
“We can talk once you finish eating,” I said to Mamoru.
“Thanks, Naofumi,” he replied. It was our fault for coming when they were eating—and learning this new information about the food situation here made a lot of the decisions for us. Food could definitely turn into money here. Proper cooking would probably allow monster meat to be eaten too . . . There was such demand in Siltran that decent food might be worth more than precious metals and jewels at the moment. Medicine was probably high value too.
We waited for Mamoru and the others to finish eating and then settled into a kind of social gathering with Keel and the others. The younger kids were quick to make friends, as expected. I had been a little worried about bullying at first, but Keel and the other villagers made good use of their trading experience to keep the kids happy.
“I have to say, Naofumi, you’ve really helped to brighten things up around here,” Mamoru said.
“I couldn’t keep the curiosity of my bunch under control, to be honest. They are planning to travel within your country to stir up some trade and make some money,” I explained.
“I’m amazed they made friends with my kids so quickly. They are normally so shy,” Mamoru commented.
“My villagers have been through much of the same stuff. That’s probably why,” I said. Raphtalia, Keel, and most of the others had all lost family to the waves. They understood that same sadness and, as a result, also the pain the others were feeling. They were quick to empathize with them while at the same time not overstimulating them. They were so similar, which was why they were getting along so quickly.
Then the kid who had been concerned with me yesterday—the kid with the cat ears called Cian—was hanging out close to me and Mamoru with a hesitant look on her face. I wondered what was up with her.
“You aren’t going to join in?” I asked her.
“I’m happy just watching,” she said. I knew the type: the kids who didn’t like to take part.
“Okay,” I said offhandedly. I wasn’t planning on playing the friendly big brother role with her, so I wasn’t all that bothered about how I came off.
As we watched Keel and the others, I chatted with Mamoru about which areas he wanted us to visit and what he wanted us to take there. There were all sorts of things he needed, as expected, in order to restore and develop the castle town. We had some serious retail opportunities here, but the issues were the national power and prices in Siltran. We’d just have to consider it a suitable investment and put in the miles. There was also the question of what to do to get home.
As we chatted, Cian was looking at the map with great interest.
“Are you interested in trading?” I asked her.
“Huh? No, why would I be?” she answered with a cold tone, looking away. That sounded exactly like she was very interested. Mamoru watched over the scene warmly. I wasn’t sure if this was something that would be of any benefit to me if I brought it up, but it also didn’t seem like a bad idea as I said it.
“I bet it would make them even better friends, Mamoru, if your kids were to go out trading with Keel and the others,” I suggested.
“Huh?” Mamoru replied.
“It makes sense, right? You can keep an eye on us to make sure we don’t get up to no good, and it will let them learn to fight a little too,” I said. Lazy mouths didn’t get fed, so the saying went. These were demi-humans we were talking about, so they would grow up fast. Keel might look like a pet puppy in dog mode, but in her demi-human form, she already looked much older than her actual years. Of course, she still didn’t have anything on Raphtalia. The only ones that had grown that much were Ruft, who was the same species as Raphtalia anyway, and Fohl from among the slaves, who had already been older.
Simply protecting these kiddies and worrying about them wasn’t going to provide any forward progress for them.
“If you’re worried about them getting injured or killed by monsters, you could always tag along for a while,” I suggested.
“Look at this! One day here and he’s leading you by the nose already, Mamoru!” R’yne said, muddying the waters considerably. I wasn’t happy about that.
“Mr. Naofumi, you aren’t planning something crooked, are you?” Raphtalia asked me.
“No, why would I be?” I replied. My Shield Hero predecessor would make a good advertisement for our trading expedition—that was about as much thought as I was giving it.
“If you all wouldn’t mind, I see no reason to turn down such an offer,” Mamoru finally said after looking at Cian for a moment. “It will be very stimulating for them, I’m sure.”
“That settles it. Have you ever done any trading before?” I asked him.
“The country provided most of what I needed,” he admitted. I was quite jealous, having had a completely different experience myself. It looked like we needed to give him a crash course. Preparing supplies and a fighting force correctly could keep even a far bigger opponent at bay.
“Melty from my village will take part in your meetings at the national level, if that would be okay,” I said. “Meanwhile, we’ll teach you to invigorate trade and get distribution flowing again.”
“I won’t be able to stay with you for too long, but anything you can teach me would be most welcome,” Mamoru replied.
And so our wagon journey around Siltran began, accompanied by Mamoru and the others.
“This is it! We’re going to travel all over Siltran and trade, trade, trade!” Keel said excitedly. The kids shouted their general agreement.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m excited!” said one of them.
“If we work hard, everyone will have an easier life!” another one explained. Keel and the others had an infectious energy, completely unafraid to head out and trade with unfamiliar regions in the past, and Mamoru’s kids seemed to be picking up on it.
“Let’s go, then,” Mamoru said. As he climbed into the wagon, people from the castle town sent him off with crisp salutes.
“Be careful, Hero Mamoru!”
“We hope for success in this new endeavor!”
“Let’s restore glory to Siltran!” Listening to their voices, I was impressed again with how much they all trusted him. The rough impression I had gotten from him during the battle might have originated with that trust from the people. The shield’s holy weapon power-up method involved trusting others and being trusted by them. In my case, it had started as a vague sort of trust, pushing me to a reasonably high defense, even unconsciously. But once we had become aware of it as a power-up method, it had clearly taken shape as a significant boost. It had also placed the focus on the Siltvelt people and those from Melromarc I had been dealing with, however, and the trust from other quarters wasn’t quite so high. In Mamoru’s case, he didn’t come off as just a saint—he felt like a true hero, someone you instantly wanted to trust.
“That’s your mark as a hero,” I said.
“What is?” he asked.
“Your charisma,” I told him.
“That’s not what this is. I just want to protect everyone, and so in turn they believe in me,” he said. He made that cornball line work. I had to give him that. He was a natural. So this was the king of heroes whose name went down in history.
“I could never do that,” I told him.
“I think you already are, Mr. Naofumi,” Raphtalia said, trying to console me. But the difference between us seemed obvious. He would surely earn that Shield Demon King name that he came to be known by.
“The grass always looks greener . . .” Mamoru said. “You’ve got a bit of a caustic mouth, but Cian has taken a liking to you, so you can’t be a bad person.”
“Cian?” I looked down at the kid who was clinging close to Mamoru. “This is her taking a liking to me?” She really did look like a cat. She reminded me of the feral ones I used to see sometimes back when I was in Japan. I waved my finger to catch her attention, using only smooth movements. She watched it intently with her eyes. Then I slowly moved my hand forward and stroked her around the neck. She started making happy purring noises, then curled up on Mamoru’s lap and went to sleep.
Yeah, so she really was just a cat. We already had a pet puppy with Keel, and now we had a cat too. At least they were easy to understand.
“I think she really likes you. I’m amazed at how much, to be honest,” Mamoru said.
“You are? I always suspected that Mr. Naofumi was good with children,” Raphtalia said.
“Really?” I said. I was honestly treating her more like a kitten than a demi-human, and I wasn’t really sure it counted as trust. This wasn’t the same thing as Mamoru’s charisma, that was for sure. If Mamoru was a hero, I was, what, a pet trainer? “The shield power-up method should be the same, but I’m not really feeling it since coming to the past,” I said. I checked my status again, and my defense was not really where I expected it to be. I pondered if this was the difference between people believing in the Shield Hero and people believing in Mamoru. Everyone who believed in Mamoru was also receiving the power-up from the shield, which made them better fighters. I wasn’t talking about the kids anymore either. “This is my first time meeting another person of the same type of hero as myself, but there are all sorts of differences between us,” I commented.
“Indeed,” Mamoru agreed. It was a bit rough on me having such a big gap between us. In my case, I was at least still getting the effects of those who believed in the Shield Hero, if not me personally. So while the effects were lower than Mamoru, it was still functioning. I just had to keep going.
“Keel, you start by gathering some customers for us. Your dog-wearing-a-loin-cloth bit should draw a crowd. Then start selling food to the people you can talk to,” I told her. Just as I had expected, there was quite the demand for food.
“Okay! Are you going to be doing the cooking, Bubba?” she asked.
“I’ve chosen things that you villagers should be able to re-create. Focus on learning to make them now so you can sell them yourselves in the future,” I said. With the waves and the wars, there was a serious lack of food here in the past. The people of Siltran were not skilled fighters and didn’t have the abilities required to kill monsters that could be used for meat. Of course, the nation’s soldiers and knights were defeating monsters to maintain the peace, but the resulting meat was not properly prepared. Mamoru knew a little about cooking, but only what he learned back in Japan about light meals. Even if you wanted barbeque, or just a nice thick steak, you still had to dress the meat, cut the tendons, all of that stuff. He had been making do with the shield modifiers and auto-cooking, but all that made was food that was neither delicious nor disgusting, just literally “food.” That had worked okay for him on a small scale up until now, but whatever the shield could turn out wasn’t going to be enough to fend off starvation for an entire nation.
In order to try and resolve that very issue, we had experimentally hooked up some filolials and Raph species to some carts and hit the open road for business purposes. Mamoru had some idea of prices within his nation and some idea of the markets through various merchant connections. The whole operation was a little different from back when I had been trading for myself with Raphtalia and Filo or even when I had left most of the work to Keel and the others—which was all, strictly speaking, in the future. They were also struggling with a lack of horse-like monsters due to the war. We had certainly picked a difficult time to come back to.
“Bubba! Ten more of the skewers!” Keel said, shouting an order. I let her know I was on it. So here we were. Before I realized it, we had become a traveling kitchen, like a medieval food truck. We defeated any monsters we encountered while moving between towns, processed them as required to turn them into food, and then cooked and sold those ingredients at the next town. Many of the people didn’t have money, so we accepted trade for other items and made sure they got fed. Things like lumber and stone, which we would have turned down prior to being sent into the past, could be used to help rebuild and so we accepted them now. These materials were sent on their way back to the castle town in order to start the repair work. It was a pleasure to see the recovery proceeding, day by day, right before our eyes. Having the lumos from the village take part in the work was leading to sturdier house construction too.
“You have some most reliable allies, future Shield Hero. Thank you so much for everything,” Mamoru said. In many RPGs, monsters dropped gold when they were defeated, but unfortunately, that wasn’t the case here. Ren, Itsuki, and Motoyasu had made some money by taking requests to solve problems within the nation, and Mamoru seemed to have followed a similar approach. Of course, there were also heroes who hit it big in business, and then there was trash like Takt too.
In any case, amid the national havoc that the waves could cause, there were plenty of chances lying around to make money through a little business. All you needed to do was be willing to bend down and pick them up. Our business got off to a good start—that was, until one week after our arrival in the past.
That was when the incident happened.
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