Armament

After seeing Ran-san and her group off, I let out a sigh.

It might be faster if I went to other villages myself and performed Tree Planting, but considering the people here, leaving now would be a bad idea.

There was no guarantee that the former bandits wouldn’t start a rebellion.

I wasn’t very good at rushing things forward or juggling multiple tasks at once.

So I preferred to secure my footing step by step before moving on to the next thing.

“What will you do next?”

“Hmm… since it’ll still take time before my Tree Planting level goes up, I’ll keep making Element Fruits as usual.”

It was a pleasant problem to have, but though fruits no longer rotted, it made it harder to raise my Tree Planting level.

Incidentally, my Tree Planting status looked like this:

Recently, the number of points I could get each day had stabilized.

About 1 point per day from each villager, so 30 points.

About 2 points per day from each former bandit, so 30 points.

And 5 points each from Aira and Nadja, so 10 points.

Altogether, that came to around 70 Smile Points per day.

…Strangely, the former bandits gave more Smile Points than the villagers.

Lately, the way they looked at me had become almost religious, and it was a bit frightening…

Loyalty was good, but it felt like they were going in the wrong direction. Just what did you do, Shekuri-san…?

I received points, so I tried not to think too hard about it, but maybe I’d need to have a serious talk with them one day.

—Ah, I was digressing. Back to the point.

The best pace for Auto Harvesting was three times a day: morning, noon, and night.

The fruit trees I planted had an extremely active metabolism, so if I reduced the harvests, fruits would fall to the ground.

And thanks to the Sanctuary’s purifying effect, they would quickly rot and turn into fertilizer, so I couldn’t cut down further without wasting fruit.

That meant I had only about 40 points I could freely use.

The points I could spend as I liked were fewer than I thought.

Thanks to the Sanctuary, there was no need to plant more World Trees, and since I had finished expanding the orchard to some degree, there was no urgent need to increase fruit trees either.

So now I used those 40 points for crossbreeding, creating different Element Fruits.

Element Fruits would undoubtedly become the specialty product of this village, so I focused on them the most.

But since this was unusual and connected to my aptitude, I wanted to entrust them only to trustworthy merchants.

Once I built a solid relationship of trust with Ran-san and her group, I planned to tell them.

Even if it required selectivity, these fruits seemed destined to become specialty goods.

At that time, I also intended to tell them in detail about Aira’s aptitude.

Aira could use Water Magic to create ice.

If she concentrated enough mana into it, she could produce ice that lasted for quite a while even in the desert.

That meant transporting fresh fruit, or even exporting frozen desserts, wasn’t impossible.

Still, since making Element Fruits didn’t take much time, I used the leftover time to make dried fruit prototypes and check up on everyone.

The villagers also helped, and together we exchanged opinions and experimented.

“All right, let’s start today with—Fire Marron.”

To sum it up, Fire Marron was just roasted chestnuts.

Not bad, but I felt like ordinary roasted chestnuts from gathered trees tasted better.

Still, Fire Marron automatically popped open after a certain amount of time.

That seemed useful as a weapon in emergencies.

…Honestly, most Element Fruits seemed better suited for weapons or traps than food.

I couldn’t help but wonder if that was really okay.

“Let’s aim for a Fruit-Weapon Nation, Woody-sama.”

“What kind of name is that? I can’t tell if it’s dangerous or whimsical!?”

While joking around with Aira, noon came.

Once we finished lunch, it was time to make dried fruits.