There are four seasons in this world. The season now is spring, a splendid fully blooming cherry blossom tree standing in the garden of my mansion in the Sanctuary showcased its light pink flowers.
Spears strike at the petals falling down. The trajectory of the swings accurately aimed at the small targets swaying irregularly. Each time, a small petal would split into two.
「Ei!」
「Honya! Nya Nya!」
The Cat Sith sisters Miri and Lala imitated our spear swings using sticks. Besides them, the Catkin siblings Wappa and Sara and the Human sisters Colette and Shirona had likewise picked up sticks for spears and have been learning by imitating our morning training for some time now.
After morning training, I recalled yesterday’s events while sparring with Sophia and talked with unbelievable delight.
「Oh gracious Dryas. To be able to grow rice seeds regardless of seasons!」
「It’s called a rice paddy because it is flooded with water, is it?」
From the center of the Sanctuary to the east side, a paddy field was made in a day with Dryas, Gnome, and Undine’s powers.
The ground was plowed and leveled with magic. Once the ground was prepped to become paddy fields, Gnome adjusted the soil to be suitable for raising rice. Then Undine filled it with water. I laid out a channel from the river to the paddies. Dryas planted the seedlings that everyone contributed to raising. It wasn’t just me and my comrades either. The Cat Sith families Mabbo, Poporo, Miri, and Lala, the Catkin siblings Wappa and Sara, Human sisters Colette and Shirona, Elven family Melty, Melanie, and Malorie, the Dwarves Doganbo-san and Golan-san all helped too.
「Doganbo-san and Golan-san, you too? I’m really glad you’re helping, but why?」
「I heard that rice can be used for alcohol too. If so then we have no choice but to help.」
「I wonder what alcohol made from rice would taste like. I’m excited.」
「………………」
I shouldn’t have asked.
The fresh and green paddies before my eyes right now will undoubtedly sparkle like gold in 10 days. Dryas explained that she wouldn’t shorten the growth time every time with her power, and starting from early summer, she would leave it to nature.
The soybean fields are doing well too. If I leave it to Dryas and Gnome, I don’t have to be concerned about the obstacle of repeated cultivation. With this, making miso and shoyu became a reality. I’m so lucky that koji was within Dryas’ field of expertise.
“This world’s food is enough, I don’t need Japanese food.” I want to scold my past self for such thoughts.
A miso warehouse and a shoyu warehouse are under construction, but the large casks were wine casks that were reappropriated. The Dwarves and Elves cooperated when told that it was for new seasonings.
In this Sanctuary, spices starting from herbs to capsicums, peppers, and Japanese peppers can easily be obtained because of Dryas.
However, these spices are rare commodities outside of the Sanctuary and they’re expensive as a result, so restaurants and the like in town basically just use salt for seasoning. These are things that everyone can obtain in the Sanctuary, so I imagine everyone has grown to have a discriminating palate, unable to have a return to the olden days of having only salt and a few herbs.
So when I told them I’d be making a new seasoning, everyone unanimously cooperated.
Since there is wine in this world, wine vinegar also exists. But I also want rice vinegar. We make use of oil that is similar to olive oil too. Still, we haven’t gotten to making oil yet, so we have to buy it at nearby towns for the time being. We’ll consider it if the people here increase more.
And, par for the course, sake distillation was spearheaded by Doganbo-san and Golan-san. And so, the kinds of alcohol made in the Sanctuary will become 4 with wine, whiskey, ale, and now sake. It seems they’ll be able to make distilled liquors from sugarcane and sweet potatoes before long. Well, I’m not too familiar with the taste because I only drink ale, wine and the like, so I think it’s fine if Doganbo-san and the drinkers do as they please.
In the 10 days for the rice plants to ripen (which is just too fast no matter how I think about it, hence why I can’t help but feel weird about it), I made the thousand tooth thresher and rice polishing magic device. The mechanism of the thousand tooth thresher was simple, but I made several prototypes of the rice polisher so it would be a magic device that can remove the hull of the threshed rice and blow it away with Wind magic, and also get rid of the rice bran. I’d like to test them after the rice harvest so I can perfect the magic device.
Everyone looked at me strangely as I gleefully worked on the thousand tooth thresher and Rice Polisher MD, but this is the one thing I can’t help myself with.
***
Footnotes:
1. A thresher removes the grain or seed from the chaff/stalk/straw. It looks like this or this.