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Chapter 16: This World
While we hurriedly put things in order in Enkar Village and were swept up in a building boom of livestock pens, chicken coops, and drying sheds, about three and a half months slipped by in no time.
"Well, of course I'd hoped it would turn out like this. But I honestly never expected it to go this well."
The rainy season was over, and a full-fledged summer had arrived in the Enkar region. A dry wind blew beneath a clear sky, and it was a pleasant summer afternoon.
"You say that, but it's all going according to your plan, isn't it, Lady Melfina?"
*Well, I wonder about that.*
I murmured that reply inwardly to Marie's somewhat proud words, my eyes still held by the sight spread out before me, unable to come back to myself for a while.
As far as the eye could see from the serf settlement, the newly cleared wasteland was covered in lush green fields.
"From one end to the other it takes about two hours even by carriage, and since the later extensions are hard to tend, I have temporarily split the settlement in two. The serf settlement that was in charge of clearing land west of the forest has also joined the new one."
Nodding at Marie's crisp report, I crouched beside a field. The plump ears of corn were just beginning to put out their silk.
The ears, which had not been improved through cross-breeding, were somewhat slimmer than the ones I remembered from my previous life, but I could tell they were packed full inside.
The silk was still a faint, translucent green, but the first field we had planted would probably begin its harvest next week.
"Is the construction of the drying sheds for after the harvest progressing?"
"I have had simple sheds built around the fields. I think storing the corn once it is dried will be more troublesome than the drying itself."
She said it would be troublesome, but Marie's voice was slightly buoyant.
Working alongside me with the serfs, Marie seemed to have come to feel how unreasonable their circumstances were. She was a kind person by nature. She seemed glad that they were receiving pay worth their labor and could finally eat their fill.
*Still, what an incredible sight.*
Even though we had burned the wasteland and made fertilizer, a combination of serfs unused to growing corn and Melfina, who was farming in earnest for the very first time, producing a harvest this abundant was not normal. I thought so, no doubt, because of my memories of my previous life.
Even if a complete amateur used seedlings of disease-resistant, selectively bred crops and tried a small home garden in an environment with plenty of fertilizer and water, growing crops would still be difficult.
In Maria of the Kingdom of Hearts, several difficulty levels can be set, from Light Mode to Hard Mode. In Light Mode, the mere existence of the saint stops epidemics and increases her prestige, but in Hard Mode the heroine actually has to go out to the farmland and carry out agricultural reform.
The setting for that in the Alexis route was none other than this very Enkar region.
After Maria successfully led the harvest to abundance, there was a still of her quietly nestling beside Alexis on the shore of Lake Moltre, which reflected the glow of the stars. It was extremely beautiful, but now all I could do was recall the scene of "Melfina in the royal capital, her eyes bloodshot with hatred, in a flashback meanwhile," and feel furious.
Anyway, in the game Maria improved the soil and planted corn, a crop that grows well even in wasteland as long as the soil is amended and fertilizer is given. Since corn can be harvested in under three months if conditions are right, it becomes the salvation of the starving people.
True to its reputation as a trivia-based otome game, Maria of the Kingdom of Hearts on Hard Mode required a great deal of knowledge about making that fertilizer and improving the soil, to the point that you had to keep a smartphone beside you and search every time you picked an option.
*To think that would turn out to be this useful.*
I had worried that the bumper crop might be possible only because Maria was the saint, but the result could be called a great success.
"Corn rarely suffers from continuous-cropping problems, so tell Nid to add more fertilizer to each field once its harvest is finished and plant seedlings again. And let's increase the beans a little more. Beans keep well, and I think they'll be a good source of protein during the winter."
"Understood. We should probably make a few more barrels for storage."
"Yes. We'll need them for selling in town, too."
"Yes. And… I have a report."
Noticing that Marie's voice, which had been so light and buoyant until then, had sunk, I turned around.
"Petitions have come in saying that the potato fields in Enkar Village are dying off one after another. Because they withered before harvest, some places are beginning to suffer a mild food shortage."
"I see…"
"When Rad stopped at the towns and villages between here and the ducal capital, it seems the potato fields everywhere had suffered the same damage. I hope it doesn't spread much further…"
Potatoes keep for a fair while, so it might not turn into an immediate food shortage all at once, but there was nothing to be done about the sense of dread.
Sooner or later prices, food above all, would rise and cast a dark shadow over daily life little by little.
"How are the wheat fields?"
"They say there are no problems, same as every year."
"All we can do is wait and see for a while."
Melfina making a fuss in the current situation would be pointless. If I said that potatoes would die out all over the country, no, all over the continent, I would be treated as a madman, or worse, be suspected of being the very cause of the blight.
As I gazed at the lush, thriving cornfield, it should have been a happy sight, yet what welled up in my chest was a shapeless unease.
*This world is somehow warped.*
While it has an aspect of the fluffy fantasy world of an otome game, beneath that stage lies the raw reality of poverty, hunger, and an unreasonable class system.
And yet, as long as things follow the scenario, an amateur's knowledge alone can create a sight like a vast field of bumper crops.
If I had only Melfina's memories, I might have thought that this was simply how saints were, even in the face of a saint's miracle.
But now that I had recovered my past-life memories, the feeling that the world did not hold together consistently made me a little queasy.
"Lady Melfina?"
"Hm? What is it, Marie?"
"Oh, it is just that you looked pale. …Is something the matter?"
Marie watched Melfina closely. Not wanting to worry her, I put on a smile.
"No, it's nothing. I was just thinking that potatoes are an important crop, and I hope they can be harvested safely."
"Perhaps it is fortunate that we planted less area to potatoes this year. And the pumpkins seem to be doing fine."
No matter how unnatural this world felt, what Melfina had to do was already decided.
My goals had not changed: to secure a firm position, and to build up enough personal assets to live on even after everything was taken from me and I was driven out.
*But if possible, I want Marie and everyone in the serf settlement, and the people of Enkar Village and the surrounding pioneer villages too, to be happy.*
"We'll turn the corn leaves and stalks into compost too, but corn is slow to break down, so we'll need to ferment it for a long time and plow it into the fields before winter."
"Yes. I will give Nid those instructions as well."
*Someday, even if the day comes when I have to leave here, the knowledge and experience won't disappear.*
The farming methods in Melfina's head were knowledge from a far more advanced age than this world's, and at the same time they were the "correct" methods, the ones that seemed to be loved by this world itself.
At the very least, anyone who tilled the soil in the Enkar region would have no need to fear starvation.
*I only hope everyone can go on living happily, never going hungry.*
I could not stop myself from praying like that, even though I had no idea what my own future would hold.
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