Grape Tree

Some time after calling for additional personnel from Bibi Village.

I had been summoned by Degji-san, the village chief, and had come to Guinea Village.

I had heard it was not so urgent, so I walked through the village without hurrying too much.

Then it occurred to me, so I made a slight detour and headed toward the grove the elves led by Utena-san were adjusting.

I had not seen it since first using Tree Arrangement (Revised).

I went over looking forward to seeing how much progress had been made and how it had changed…

“Ohh, amazing…”

Even to an amateur like me, it had a beauty that made it clear how orderly and methodical it was.

In my case, I had only been arranging the trees rather haphazardly by type so it would be easy to tell what fruit could be harvested, but what Utena-san and the others had put in order was a true forest.

Various trees overlapped here and there, and the contrast between the tall trees and the low trees was beautiful.

The fruits also made it rich in color, so it started to feel as though I had come to a garden.

With the future in mind and to collect data, they were currently making three groves as a controlled experiment, each with different distances between the trees.

Apparently, Utena-san thought the second one, with a fair amount of spacing, was best.

“In this Sanctuary, the trees grow too much, for better or worse. Therefore, it is important to leave a certain amount of distance between each tree and give them enough room so that the roots do not become entangled.”

Fruit ripened every day, but I had never paid attention to the trees themselves.

Apparently, their growth rate was also quite fast compared with ordinary trees, and I was told that if regular maintenance was not carried out, in a few decades a thickly overgrown forest would be born.

I had known that crops and trees grew better in the Sanctuary, but I had not thought it was at that kind of pace.

But thinking back on it, it did feel as though the Element Fruit orchard in Tree Village managed by Simurg-san was getting bigger by the day.

I had not noticed it at all. That had been a blind spot…

Learning just this much alone made it worth asking the elves for help.

“However, just because they grow quickly does not mean it is all bad. If the trees grow larger and the spacing between them becomes too short, they can simply be cut down, and fortunately the saplings planted anew also grow quickly.”

“I see…”

Until now, I had hardly ever cut down any fruit trees.

Fruit was Wenti’s lifeline. If it was stored in the Harvest Bag, it would not rot, and the more there was, the better, so I had even been steadily expanding the orchard more and more.

Since I had plenty of Smile Points and could still increase production much further, we had only just been talking about how it might be a good idea, while also raising Tree Planting’s level, to plant a large number of fruit trees and expand the space where trees could grow by spreading outward from Tree Village and Guinea Village.

But thinking about it over the long term, maybe that would be a problem.

For now, we had more than enough food, and I had heard that within the Kingdom of Aries, Wenti-brand fruit was gradually becoming the subject of rumor.

To properly establish its brand value, it might not be good to mass-produce too much.

Though I supposed that was not really a problem, since we could simply limit the amount we put out.

“By the way, Woody-sama, are you able to produce saplings?”

“Hmm, when I bring out the World Tree, it always becomes a sapling, but… when I plant a tree with ‘Tree Planting,’ for some reason a fully grown tree comes out right away… Ah.”

At that, something suddenly occurred to me.

Crossbreeding the World Tree with another plant.

I realized I had never once tried that until now.

Why in the world had I never thought of it before?

Perhaps it was because I always had it in my head that the World Tree was something sacred, and because of that, somewhere inside I had been putting the brakes on the idea that crossbreeding the World Tree would be sacrilegious.

Though considering I was already planting huge numbers of World Trees, it was a bit late to be saying that now.

Still, maybe I should ask Utena-san if it was all right to do.

I was not well versed in World Tree matters, after all.

“Utena-san, actually… one thing led to another, and…”

“You mean combining the World Tree with another tree…? There is no precedent for it, so I cannot say for sure, but… I imagine there would probably be no problem.”

After receiving permission (?) from Utena-san, I activated “Tree Planting.”

I wondered what to combine it with first, but for the time being, I decided to try pairing it with the Grape Tree, the one I used the most.

I brought out the World Tree and the Grape Tree—and activated crossbreeding!

Then the area was enveloped in a dazzling light—and when the light faded, there stood a single grape tree.