I might have left that adventurer tied up for just a little too long. I’d meant to untie him right away, but it completely slipped my mind.
“Ugh, how am I ever going to show my face there again!”
It’s entirely his fault, the shameless fool, for trying to find out where another adventurer was gathering higher grade herbs.
But even so, I’ve managed to make myself stand out in the worst possible way.
I gathered plenty more herbs after that, but now I can’t bring myself to go turn them in.
This is where you can tell I’m still just a kid at heart!
Living in the cabin—my family home, I suppose you could call it—means I can get by without money. I don’t have to pay for room or board, after all.
Though, when it comes to food, I’m the one doing all the farming, hunting, and cooking!
But I still wanna save up! And besides, I really can’t stand the smug looks Selina gives me.
“I’m just going to go collect some tree roots!” I announce.
The truth is, I’m just running away because I’m too embarrassed to go to the Adventurers’ Guild. I try to convince myself otherwise…
But well, at least this will help stop the Great Forest from spreading, even if it’s just a tiny bit!
First stop: the edge of the Great Forest closest to Lang Village.
Maggie’s father and the others are working so hard to cut down trees, but the forest just keeps creeping closer and closer to the village.
“Just chopping them down isn’t enough!” I mutter.
Of course, the adults know that much. But digging up all the roots and hauling them out with horses is back-breaking work.
It seems like they’re prioritizing felling the trees for now.
If I used Storage on all the stumps at once, it would be way too obvious, so I do it little by little.
While I’m at it, I thin out a few dozen trees from the part of the forest nearest to Lang Village.
I’m only thinning the forest, not clear-cutting it. I doubt anyone will even notice, right?
“Oof, these trees are surprisingly heavy!”
Normally, you don’t feel the weight of things in Storage, but I think I’ve overstuffed it.
It feels a lot like being too full to move.
I teleport back near the cabin for a moment and start piling up the logs. I make sure to trim off all the branches, too!
Once they’re dry, they’ll make perfect kindling for the fireplace.
“That’s it! I’ll renovate the cabin this spring!”
Yeah, that’s a perfect idea!
It’s a bit cramped with just Selina and me. If possible, I’d love to build a proper bathroom.
I’ve gotten a lot better since the first time I built that fence for the garden. I can even slice the wood into thin planks now!
And I can use my Spatial Magic to assemble the timber.
“I’ll have to buy nails, though.”
Ugh, that means I’ll need money again.
“I wonder if I could sell this lumber? But with Lang Village and all the other towns nearby chopping down trees like mad, the price has probably plummeted.”
There’s likely a demand for lumber and firewood in places that don’t border the Great Forest, but I’m sure other people have already thought of that.
They’re probably hauling it out by the wagonload even now.
Besides, if I started transporting lumber with my Storage Magic, I’d definitely attract unwanted attention and probably get caught. Not that I’d let them catch me without a fight, of course.
For now, I’ll just stack the lumber I cut down deep inside the Great Forest. I might find a use for it eventually.
As for the roots, I grind them to dust with Air Cutter and Discharge them into my fertilizer pile.
“It’s completely full!”
Our garden is bigger than it used to be, but it’s still nothing compared to a real farmer’s fields.
Which means we don’t need all that much fertilizer!
“Maybe I can just spread the fine dust over the sleeping winter fields? But I wonder if it would even work as fertilizer once the snow falls?”
Then again, it’d be bad if anyone found out.
“I know! I’ll just spread it around the areas where the high-grade herbs grow!”
It feels a bit silly, fertilizing a forest that’s already growing out of control. But I gotta Discharge this stuff somewhere.
“I wish there was a barren wasteland somewhere… I feel like I could just transplant all these trees there.”
The expansion of the Great Forest is a problem, sure, but I bet there are regions and even whole countries with very few forest resources.
The only problem is that there’s nowhere like that near our cabin!
The general studies textbook Selina brought me is from the Kingdom of Sarina, so it isn’t very detailed about the Kingdom of Unia.
I’m sure there are parts of the Kingdom of Unia that don’t border the Great Forest, and I bet there are wastelands, too.
If I could just pull the trees up, roots and all, and transplant them there, wouldn’t that kill two birds with one stone?
Then again, a wasteland probably doesn’t get much rain. Would the trees just die?
But even if they did, they could still be used for lumber or firewood, right?
Oh, the feeling of helplessness is overwhelming. I’m still just a ten-year-old!
When I ran my ideas by Selina, she burst out laughing.
So apparently, spreading fertilizer in the Great Forest is a bad idea after all.
“Zoe, sometimes I’d love to take a peek inside that head of yours!” she told me.
It does seem like selling the lumber is a real possibility, though! It just feels like such a waste to chop down all these trees and just leave them to rot.
“Someone in the Royal Capital would probably be willing to buy the lumber,” Selina says. “But you’d need a wagon and a horse. And someone to do the selling!”
I can just see the money flying out of my pockets.
“That’s impossible!”
“Don’t be a fool,” she scoffs. “You use a merchant. If you partner with one in a town near the capital, they’ll handle all the selling for you.”
I wonder where we’d ever find a merchant that convenient?
But just as I’m thinking it, it becomes clear Selina plans to use one of her old contacts.
Is she planning to sell it in the capital of the Sarina Kingdom?
“But that’s so far away!”
“It can’t be helped! Besides, since this will help stop the expansion of Schwarzwald, he won’t be in any position to complain.”
Oh, I see. She’s going to sidestep the problem the court mage asked her to solve and just push all this lumber on him instead!
It doesn’t sound like Selina is going to talk to a merchant herself. She’s just going to dump the whole mess on the court mage.
Well, from my perspective, as long as I get a little money out of it, I don’t really mind.
“What about a wagon?” I ask.
This is a huge problem! And we’d need a horse!
“If you’re going to be an adventurer, Zoe, you need to learn how to ride a horse.”
“Huh? But I can teleport. Why would I need to ride a horse?”
She looks at me as if I’m the biggest fool in the world.
“Are you planning to teleport in front of other adventurers? I’m sure they’d be delighted to set traps and lie in wait to capture you next time!”
Being a witch is so inconvenient!
Magic makes life so much easier, but you can’t even use it because you have to worry about people seeing you!
“And while you’re at it, I’d like you to build the wagon.”
What?! That’s a completely unreasonable demand. I was planning on renovating the cabin, but a wagon? Isn’t that impossible?
I could probably make the cargo bed! But what about the wheels? And the axles? I think they have brakes, too.
“Well, we can just buy one used wagon, and you can copy that to build the other!”
“Wait, I’m the one who has to do that?”
“Obviously!” Selina declares.
But you can’t do it yourself, can you?
Selina might be an incredible witch, but she’s terribly clumsy. She can make potions, but she’s completely hopeless at alchemy.
She had to spend a small fortune just to buy her magic lamp in the Royal Capital.
Wait, but me? I can make a magic lamp! The instructions were right there in Selina’s textbook.
I haven’t learned how to make anything else, though, so that’s my limit!
I highly doubt Selina could build a wagon. And yet, she has the gall to make such an impossible demand of me!
“If you can’t do it, then I suppose you’ll just have to become the court mage’s apprentice!”
“That’s just you abandoning your responsibilities as my teacher! Can’t we please just buy two wagons?” I whine.
But my tearful pleading was no match for Selina’s shameless audacity.
Oh, the misery…