Chapter 61

Toward sunset, once the ship salvage at the harbor had settled down somewhat, I headed for the dragon butchering site.

Kururu, who until a little while ago had come along with me everywhere as a bodyguard, was apparently finally convinced that the territory was more or less safe by now, and was doing paperwork with Iiria concerning tax collection.

When I went to the company, a wagon that had apparently been making nonstop trips hauling dragon meat since morning was just about to head to the site, so I got a ride on it and rattled my way there.

When I arrived, I noticed rows of carnivorous birds lining the trees around the work area. They had probably been drawn by the smell of blood, but dragon meat was far too valuable to feed to birds.

“Oh, how was the harbor?”

Kengo, covered head to toe in dragon blood, noticed me and waved.

Apparently the blood was being collected too, then set with salt water into something like jelly. It was eaten on top of hot wheat porridge, and was said to be a kind of food for the sick.

Iiria and Kururu had both made openly disgusted faces, but when I said it sounded delicious, like a Chinese-style porridge, they looked at me with blank disdain.

No one could defeat Japanese people who ate things like sea squirts and natto.

“The salvage was going smoothly. No one got into any fights.”

“That’s good to hear. Things are pretty harmonious over here too.”

With evening approaching, impromptu barbecues had started up here and there as a perk of the work.

There was such an enormous amount of meat that it felt impossible to preserve all of it, and apparently there was not enough salt or distilled liquor to preserve all the organs either, so if the alternative was letting it rot, it was better just to eat it.

The butchers should have come to buy as much as they could, but there still seemed to be some left over, so perhaps we ought to simply distribute it all to the townspeople.

“Still, the mine is in terrible shape…”

The dragon butchering was being done in the pit where the first dragon had been smashed down, and right above that was the entrance to the mine. Now the entrance there had collapsed and was almost completely buried.

“From what the guy who went inside said, things are a real disaster in there. Support beams in the tunnels are broken and all that. The ore stockpile was safe, but it may take a while before mining can resume.”

If Kengo, the mine supervisor, was saying that, then the situation was probably genuinely bad.

“Oh, right. Where’s Dodol-san?”

“Mm.”

The place Kengo indicated with his chin was beneath the breastbone of a dragon so huge it could swallow up a beastfolk giant whole, where Dodol was sawing through the ribs with an enormous saw.

“This is about food, right?”

“Not food—food production.”

While we were talking, the ribs had been separated from the spine, and they were taking a breather.

The best meat we had eaten had also come attached to rib bones, but apparently those bones existed to protect the internal organs. A dragon’s rib cage apparently had a three-layer structure, so no matter how hard you tried, you could never inflict a fatal wound with something like a sword or spear.

“Dodol-san!”

When I called his name, Dodol noticed me. Then, after giving instructions to the beastfolk around him, he lumbered over.

“So, Yorinobu the Dragon-Slayer.”

“The name keeps getting flashier…”

Apparently these epithets were part of beastfolk culture, and Kengo was laughing his head off.

“I wanted to talk sooner rather than later about the food issue.”

“Yeah, it concerns us too, so of course. Hey! Bring us alcohol and meat!”

When we had first met, Dodol had been full of enough hostility that it felt like he would have bitten me to death the moment he got the chance, but it felt like we had become considerably more familiar with each other.

And after spending time with them, I had realized that their harsh tone did not mean they were in a bad mood; it seemed more that if they spoke quietly, their voices were so low that no one could understand what they were saying.

“I’d thought about fish farming and even made some preparations for it, but I realized I hadn’t touched livestock at all.”

“Livestock.”

Dodol gulped down ale and bit chunks off half-raw meat with his bare hand.

“Mainly chickens and pigs. The dragon’s appearance and the sinking ships really drove home a sense of crisis. The island’s food situation is too bad. I want us to be able to produce as much as possible ourselves.”

“Hmph. You see sheep and goats outside town all the time. Is that different?”

“If we wanted to increase sheep, we’d need vast pastureland, and salted goat meat isn’t exactly a bestseller.”

Dodol narrowed his eyes at me.

“That smell in goat meat is what makes it so good.”

“And there’s also the question of how efficient it would be to scale up.”

Dodol nodded.

“Chickens and pigs are useful to us too. Leave them alone and they multiply on their own.”

“And yet there’s absolutely no one producing them on a large scale.”

That had been a bit of a mystery. Cattle seemed difficult because they needed even more grazing land than sheep, but pig and chicken farming should have been easier, since they were omnivores and had looser feeding constraints. In fact, ones that had grown up scavenging through town garbage were already being sold by butchers.

And yet no one was doing it on a large scale.

Was this one of those common isekai things where no one ever did the obvious? I wondered that, but after asking around among the people at the company, the reason became clear soon enough.

“If the company provides the initial capital, would you beastfolk be willing to take it on?”

No matter what it was, the first obstacle in trying to produce something industrially was capital.

Even pigs and chickens that would multiply on their own while scavenging around town still needed facilities if you wanted to scale them up.

If you started counting the land, feed, and manpower needed, the sum quickly became considerable.

The reason Jirenu Territory, with its low food self-sufficiency, had no chicken or pig farming at all was because there was no one who could bear that initial investment.

But if that were the only reason, then it would not have been strange for some merchant company to have made a move already.

Which meant there was one more obstacle unique to this society.

“We provide meals at our workshop and company, so we have stable demand for meat. We can consume what we produce ourselves. That means there’s no danger of butchers taking advantage of us after we raise a large quantity and forcing us to sell cheap.”

This was the biggest reason no one raised chickens or pigs, despite the demand existing.

The butchers’ guild was protected by a privilege that said no one whatsoever was permitted to sell meat by bypassing the butchers.

Which meant the only places you could sell the pigs and chickens you raised were the limited number of butchers.

If you only raised them occasionally in a free-range way or as a side activity and sold some now and then, that was one thing, but the moment you tried to industrialize it, the situation changed completely.

There were no refrigerators, so once you slaughtered them, you could not preserve the meat. But if you kept them alive, they just kept getting older and eating more feed.

If the butchers took advantage of that and held back on buying, then the producers would have no choice but to give in.

No one did it because it was obvious they would end up being sneered at by the butchers and forced to sell at low prices while being made to feel indebted for the favor.

But at Takahashi Workshop and the company, meals were provided every day to the workers.

Recently beastfolk had been added to that as well, so the daily meals had become a fairly substantial volume, and the demand was stable.

So if the company hired beastfolk to handle livestock farming, then supplying meat to the company’s own personnel would, on paper, be considered internal provision rather than a commercial sale.

Which meant it would not violate the butchers’ guild’s monopoly on sales.

And since both the company and the workshop needed to grow much larger, even just meeting our own consumption would cover no small share of the meat consumption within the territory.

If we created an accomplished fact like this first, then gradually eroded the butchers’ privileges, it should eventually open the road toward a large-scale livestock business.

“And on top of that, I want to borrow the beastfolk’s knowledge and skill when it comes to preserved foods.”

That was something I had realized through the dragon butchering.

From what I heard, the beastfolk occupied a politically unstable position, so many of them lived as wanderers.

It was apparently normal for them to be driven out of town one day on the whim of those in power, which meant carrying preserved food had become a habit. And because they interacted with people from many different lands who had been exiled in the same way, their knowledge and techniques were honed further.

The reason dragon processing and preservation were being done with such astonishing speed was because they had their own such culture.

When I had gone to the bonesetter Gorgon’s house, he had served us a fermented drink like yogurt, and that was something I would almost never see in a human shop.

The beastfolk were strong not only with preserved foods, but also with fermented foods. In this world, where food poisoning could be fatal, humans tended to shy away from anything other than traditional fermented foods.

But beastfolk could tell at once with their animal noses whether something had spoiled, which made them perfectly suited to making preserved foods and fermented foods.

“If livestock and preservation go well, the food situation should improve considerably. Even if for some reason we can’t leave the island, I think we could at least reach the point where we wouldn’t starve right away.”

While I was talking, someone handed me dragon meat and I bit into it too, but after eating dragon meat three meals a day, it was starting to get a little rough.

Kengo, true to being said to be close to the beastfolk, was eating it happily, but if you looked closely, he was choosing only lean cuts with little fat, so apparently he was still mindful of his muscles.

“Do you sense war coming?”

At Dodol’s quiet question, I nearly choked on my meat.

“Cough… n-no, it’s not exactly that, but…”

Still, I was startled because I did have some degree of foreboding.

“It’s just… the appearance of dragons suggests the mine has a rich ore vein, doesn’t it?”

When I looked at Kengo, the mine supervisor just shrugged.

“It’s more of an empirical rule, but the people who’ve seen dragons appear at other mines all say the same thing: it’ll probably turn into a mountain of treasure.”

“And there were two of them. On top of that, you lot have someone returned from the mine too. The power of rich magic stones must be overflowing here.”

I nodded—true enough. And if that was the case, then the concern stopped seeming like baseless worry.

“At present, the only one buying the island’s magic stones is the Bax Company. If it turns out the mine sits on a major ore vein, what do you think will happen?”

The beastfolk, who survived in this harsh world, answered matter-of-factly.

“They’ll come to take it by force.”

“Exactly. So I think we should shore up our foundations with the worst-case scenario in mind.”

But Dodol neither nodded nor answered right away. He tore off a chunk of meat, swallowed it, and washed it down with alcohol.

Only after repeating that sequence a full three times did he speak.

“So we beastfolk raise animals. Or even process them into preserved foods. Fine. But…”

Dodol’s large eyes rolled toward me.

“Are there really humans who would eat it?”

“Huh?”

Dodol stared straight at me as I stood there in surprise.

“That’s…”

I had forgotten. It was exactly the sort of issue I had run into just recently.

Would people tolerate beastfolk being used for cargo hauling and working in the same workplace?

There had been no trouble with cargo hauling, but what about food?

Why had Kururu, who had been handling the workshop meals, stepped back once the craftsmen’s families started standing in the kitchen?

“That’s different from hauling cargo. And when it comes to livestock, unlike wheat or vegetables…”

Seeing Dodol unusually trail off, Kengo let out a sigh and said in Japanese,

“Beastfolk and beasts look too similar.”

Beastlike beastfolk handling animal meat.

“People start imagining something like cannibalism, and ugly rumors spread easily. Like them selling the meat of their own companions after they stop being useful, for example.”

At Kengo’s explanation, my face twisted.

“Well, there are also stories that the reason no one hires beastfolk as sheep or goat herders is because they’ll snack on the flock out on the grasslands where nobody’s looking.”

That part Kengo said in our shared language, looking at Dodol.

“You’re not going to deny it, are you?”

“…Humans have thieves too.”

“The size of the stomach is different.”

Kengo laughed, and Dodol blew air through his nose in annoyance.

It was a risky joke, but that only showed how comfortable the two had become with each other.

“Still, Yorinobu the Dragon-Slayer.”

That epithet seemed to have gotten even more grandiose, but I looked at Dodol.

“You hold the second-highest position on this island after Iiria. Maybe even higher than that little girl.”

Dodol poured fresh alcohol from a barrel, but without drinking it, he went on.

“If you tell them to eat, every one of those under you will eat. While pinching their noses. But each time they do, hostility will build in their bellies.”

I wanted to say, That can’t be true… but I was not confident enough to.

It was the sort of thing I ought to have denied, yet among the people living in this world there was a deep cultural gulf of their own.

“Would it work if we put some humans in between?”

At that point Kengo spoke up.

“If humans worked together with you, wouldn’t it smooth things over a little?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s about wine, even if it’s not something you drink much here.”

“Wine?”

When I asked Kengo too, he answered with a wicked grin.

“At harvest festivals, it’s always cute girls who stomp the grapes. But in the everyday monotony of work, whose old feet do you think are really stomping those grapes?”

The hand that had been about to lift my drink stopped, and Dodol seemed to understand too.

“If there are some rare humans willing to get covered in blood and work alongside us and the pigs, then maybe.”

Even looking around the dragon butchering site, the ones actually dragging out the innards, scooping up the pooled blood, and cutting apart meat on the verge of spoiling were the beastfolk.

The humans from the company and the craftsmen who came by wagon were doing work a short distance away, jobs that did not involve touching blood. Looking at Kengo made it easy to forget, but the positions of humans and beastfolk were still far apart.

“About that… I’ll try looking into it.”

“Hmph. You can just do it yourselves without involving us. Then there’ll be no trouble. The matter of preserved foods is just technique, in the end. It’s not as though we can’t teach it to you lot.”

When Dodol said that, he was not looking at me, but somewhere far away.

The reason his profile felt so painfully familiar was because it looked just like Kururu and Iiria had when I had first met them.

A deep resignation and sense of helplessness.

And yet the very reason I had wanted to involve the beastfolk in this matter was because even Dodol carried that same feeling.

“I want all of you to work, as much as possible. For the island.”

Dodol frowned.

“Cheap sympathy?”

His eyes became dangerous again, like they had been when we had just first met.

“No. Remember what we talked about with adventurers.”

Dodol blinked.

Then he made a face like he already disliked where this was going.

“…Are you plotting something?”

“Yes. After all, I’m the master of a wicked merchant company.”

At that, Dodol bared one side of his mouth, showing a fang in a crooked way.

Apparently, that was a smile.

“I’m talking about the composition of an adventuring party. Beastfolk were indispensable, right?”

The beastfolk’s role was to serve as the front line, disregarding danger and acting as a shield for mages so they could use their magic.

“And I hear skilled adventurers always form deep bonds of trust with the beastfolk on the front line. In other words—”

“In other words, if we improve the beastfolk’s living conditions, then adventurers might start coming to the island on their own.”

Gerario and the others, who had been considering retirement, had in fact come following rumors of this island for Tsatsaru’s sake.

The island’s productive capacity was limited, so the population could not be increased recklessly. That naturally meant the size of any army would be limited as well.

But mages were, literally, worth a thousand men.

Even retired adventurers should be capable of sinking any lawless ship that tried to approach the island. If enough adventurers gathered, we could build an ironclad defense.

In other words, making use of the beastfolk within the island’s economy was not simply an act of charity aimed at improving their circumstances.

If we could establish this island as one where beastfolk could live comfortably, that reputation could draw adventurers in and become a defensive force protecting the island from the harsh waves of this unforgiving world.

“Hm.”

Dodol grunted.

“That nerve of yours, trying to use us as bait, is almost admirable.”

And with that he bit off and swallowed a chunk of the raw dragon meat he had still been holding.

“But for the sake of people like Master Tsatsaru, we would gladly serve as bait.”

Kengo grinned and slapped Dodol on the shoulder.

“And we’re very interested in this large-scale livestock thing too. If we can do it independently, maybe none of our people will have to go hungry anymore.”

“But then the butchers will get angry, right?”

I nodded at Kengo’s words.

“I’ve thought about whether we should bring out Iiria-san’s strong authority… but I still don’t want to clash with the bakers’ and butchers’ guilds yet. If they did something like a strike, then even though Iiria-san’s power has finally started to stabilize, it could spark a revolt.”

Even in my old world, bakers and butchers had historically been two immensely powerful guilds. That it was no different here was because they controlled the very foundation of people’s lives.

“So it may be difficult, but I’ll look into different ways.”

A method by which beastfolk could be involved in livestock production, and people could eat the result without hesitation.

Dodol seemed to hesitate for a while, then gave a vague nod.

Maybe it meant he would wait, but not with much expectation.

“Looks like there’s still time for one more round of work before it gets fully dark.”

Having finished eating, Dodol stood up, said that, and went back to work.